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TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER; 



OR, 



A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 



V 



By JOHN DARBYk 



•• /-\i~> r» 



J 







AUTHOR OF "THINKERS AND THINKING," " ODD HOURS 
OF A PHYSICIAN," ETC. 







?SOFn 






Oa 









PHILADELPHIA : 

CLAXTON, REMSEN & HAFFELFINGER, 

624, 626 & 628 Market Street. 

1876. 



Get. 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by 

CLAXTON, REMSEN & HAFFELFINGER, 

in the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 

Collins, Printer. 



The Library 
of Con-guess 



WASHINGTON 



*** 



*^ 



-«i ,>v 



J. F>G>N & SON, 
STEREOTYPE FOUNDERS, 

PHILADELTHIA. ^ 
^ ^ 




TO " CEBES," 

Who may stand as the representative of many of the writer's 
friends ; earnest inquirers after truth, sceptical alone because of 
not seeing the way clearly, 

^JLhis Jfittle jjolnme is. jpedwatext ; 

the hope being indulged that the meaning of life and of living 
will be found in its pages. 




in 



'From the dead, O Cedes, living things and living men 
are produced? ' — PHiEDO. 





T is undeniably the case that the Positivist in 
his observations, investigations, and exclu- 
sions, is enabled to exhibit Mind as a sim- 
ple functional expression ; and consequently 
that it is not a something immortal. Hence 
it is that many, of short sight, conclude it demonstrated that 
the teachings of the theologians are errors, and that man 
has no different part or state assigned him than belongs to 
Matter and Force at large. The author of this little volume, 
in a hope of being able to show, with simple language 
and illustrations, how erroneous is such a conclusion, and 
at the same time to exhibit plainly and fully what is the 
status of man in creation, has occupied a few of his leisure 
hours in writing the brochure here presented. That it may 
accomplish the purpose of its intention in putting to rest 
many unwise doubts, and in showing how grand is the 
capability of the human, is a wish not less sincere than are 

the convictions which go to make up the arguments. 

vii 



viii INTRODUCTION. 

In making the dialogue an addendum, as it were, to 
Plato's world-famous controversy on the Immortality of the 
Soul, the " Phaedo," the design is to extend the meaning of 
the present discourse, and to call the attention — of people 
who might happen to be unfamiliar with it — to a production 
of which the meditative Cato was wont to remark, "that 
when surrounded by the wrecks made in the contentions of 
Pompey and Caesar, it was to the Phaedo alone that he could 
turn for consolation." It is a pity, indeed, that so little 
should be known by people of the present day of the great 
controversies of Cynosarges and the Academy. Acquaint- 
ance with Socrates and Plato is the best possible guard 
against coming to unwise decisions, and should constitute 
a part of the education of every cultivated individual. 

Aside from the intentions just noted, it may not but be 
seen that a dialogic form is that best adapted to a manner 
of composition, where frequent explanations are rendered 
necessary in order that meanings may be made plain. 

In the arguments here presented, it is assumed that the 
capability of man is tripartite ; but that everything else in na- 
ture is strictly dual. If such a distinction be not clearly made 
evident, then the labor of the effort is a barren one, and the 
trouble taken amounts to nothing. If, on the contrary, the 
writer makes his subject understood, then must it be seen 
by the reader that the mysteries of life are just no mysteries 
at all ; and for a man to understand himself, it needs only 
that he inquire. 

Philadelphia, July 4th, 1875. 




PART FIRST. 

GENERAL ARGUMENT. 

PAGE 

The Queries of Cebes concerning the Soul . . . 14 

Transmigration, a Text from Ovid 15 

The Ionian Judgment ..'-..••• V 20 

Reflections in a Cemetery 24 

Enquiries concerning the Soul 27 

Protagoras and Things 31 

A Definition of Things 32 

Men and Brutes 33 

The Quality of Apprehension 39 

Real Things and Images 42 

The Cartesian System 43 

Nothing Wrong in Itself 47 

Idealism 52 

The Creating of Things 54 

PART SECOND. 

THE SOUL. 

Seven Senses 59 

Offices of the Senses 60 

God and Soul, one 61 

Immortality . . 64 

ix 



X CONTENTS. 

PART THIRD. 
WHO, AND WHAT IS MAN? 

PAGB 

The Entities 72 

Spinoza 72 

Locke's Definition of Soul 74 

Leibnitz's Definition of Mind 74 

Defects of above Definitions 74 

A Watch and Intelligence 75 

Soul not a Necessary Part of Man . . . .76 

Mind and a Shadow 78 

Thought, a Function 78 

Matter 80 

Force . . . . 81 

Hegelianism 82 

The Becoming and Departing 83 

Relation of Man with Brutes and Vegetables . . 86 

Mind 89 

Genius 91 

Suffering by Negation 98 

God and Men . . 98 

The Writing on a Tombstone ..... 106 




TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER. 



XI 



ARGUMENT. 

NEARLY twenty-three hundred years ago, Socrates, whose 
name is familiar to all thinkers, was executed at Athens, 
having been condemned by the judges because of accusations 
preferred by one Melitus that he disbelieved in the gods of his 
country, and through his teachings corrupted the Athenian youth. 
On the day in which the sentence was to be carried into effect, 
there were assembled in the prison his friends Echecrates, Phaedo, 
Apollodorus, Cebes, Simmias, and Crito, and with these Plato 
represents as being held the world-famous conversation on the 
immortality of the soul. 

In the present dialogue, it has not been thought either amiss or 
out of keeping with nature's laws to imagine that, in the cor- 
relations or transmigrations of life, these friends should find 
themselves again together after the lapse of all these years, and 
that, possessed of the lore of the modern Positivist, the conversa- 
tion should be renewed. 

In these pages it is recognized that the Positivist is right in 
maintaining that man is an automaton, and in the declaration that 
mind is a function of the brain, living and dying with that mass 
of matter in which it has its existence. It is also held that the 
organization of man demonstrates his ability to live without a 
soul; that a soul is not a necessity to man, and that he may 
be born, may live, and die, without the immortal principle. It 
is finally attempted to be shown that man is the only offspring of 
creation to whom has been given the capability of receiving and 
holding the immortal principle, and that the extent and character 
of his immortality depend upon himself. What this principle 
is, the Analysis exhibits. 



xn 




TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER. 



■O0>©<C 



Socrates. It is permitted me, O Cebes, to continue 
with you that conversation which the good intention 
of Crito would have altogether prevented,, had we not 
denied the importunities of him who prepared the 
poison-cup. 

Cebes. Nothing strange does it seem to hear again 
the voice. 

Soc. Nothing strange; for that which is heard is 
immortal; instruction resides not less on the lips of 
folly than in the speech of wisdom, and he who hears 
not the voice always, hears not only because that he 
does not listen. But heed, Cebes, and call you Phaedo, 
and Echerates, Apollodorus, Simmias, and Crito ; shall 
we not with profit take up the subject of our discourse 
at that point where the commands of the officer of the 
Eleven interrupted it ? 

2 13 



14 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

Ceb. Whether the voice be false or true, whether it 
bears the speech of Cynosarges or deceives through the 
lips of a sophist, I will listen, hoping to find doubts 
resolved. 

Soc. Judge of a speech, Cebes, by the argument. 
This, then, is the sum of what you inquired, when, in 
the pen at Athens, we sat together two thousand years 
ago. You required it to be proved that man has a 
soul ; that soul is something imperishable and immor- 
tal; that a philosopher who is about to die, full of 
confidence and hope that after death he shall be far 
happier than if he had died after leading a different 
kind of life, does not entertain such confidence foolishly 
and vainly. You asserted, as well, that even to be able 
to show that a soul is something having existence, and 
that it is of a strong and divine nature, and that it lived 
before we men were born, not at all hinders, but that 
all such things may evince, not its immortality, but 
that the soul is durable, and existed an immense space 
of time before, and knew and did many things; but 
that, for all this, it was not at all the more immortal ; 
but that its entrance into the body of a man is the 
beginning of its destruction, as though it were a disease, 
so that it passes through this life in wretchedness, and 
at last perishes in what is called death. You declared, 
also, that it is of no consequence whether it should 
come into a body once or often with respect to our 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 1 5 

occasion of fear, for it is right, you said, that he should 
be afraid, unless he be foolish, who does not know, and 
cannot give a reason to prove that the soul is immortal. 
Such is, I think, Cebes, the sum of what you required, 
and what you asserted. 

Ceb. I do not take from, or add to it ; such things I 
said. 

Soc. Now that the centuries which have come and 
gone, have left behind demonstrations of which the 
sophists knew nothing, and of which we in our turn had 
as little provision — now, holding speech again together, 
we are able to affirm of things whereof formerly we 
ventured alone to insinuate. Give heed, Cebes; to-day 
we shall have a demonstration which in itself carries its 
own voucher ; to-day we shall be made to feel that we 
know whereof we affirm. The centuries, my Cebes, 
are as vantage ground. What Theaetetus knew not of 
the meaning of science is now fully comprehended, for 
the times have exhibited not only this meaning, but as 
well the end of such manner of inquiry. Let us, then, 
talk together from the standpoint of to-day, for after 
such manner it is that we have to the advantage of our 
discourse, that fresher knowledge to which I allude. 

Ceb. After whatsoever manner it best pleases you. 

Soc. We will have then, as a text, those lines which 
the poet Ovid makes as speech for Pythagoras. 



1 6 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

" Death has no power the immortal soul to slay ; 
That, when its present body turns to clay, 
Seeks a fresh home, and with unminished might 
Inspires another frame with life and light. 
So I myself (well I the past recall), 
When the fierce Greeks begirt Troy's holy wall 
Was brave Euphorbus ; and in conflict drear, 
Poured forth my blood beneath Atrides' spear ; 
The shield this arm did bear, I lately saw 
In Juno's shrine, a trophy of that war." 

Heed, Crito, when all was over, as you would have 
it, did you catch and bury Socrates ? * You remember, 
my friends, that I craved you as sureties to Crito, whom 
I could not persuade that the body he was to bury was 
not Socrates, even though I argued long both for his and 
my own consolation. When I shall tell you what I 
now know, it will not seem a strange thing to learn that 
Socrates was a mourner with you at his own funeral. 
There was a something also that I held with Simmias. 

* After the conclusion of his discourse, Socrates proposed to 
bathe himself in order that such trouble might be spared those 
who were to prepare his body for interment. Crito. anxious to 
pay every respect to the master, asks Socrates if he has any com- 
mands to give, and among other things begs to know how he 
would like to be buried. Smiling, the sage replies, " Just as you 
please, provided you can catch me," and he then begs the others 
to be sureties to Crito for his absence from the body, as before, Crito 
had been bound to the judges for his appearance on the day of 
trial. 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 1 7 

If I am not wrong, Simmias, we did agree, after some 
argument, that death consisted alone in a separation of 
soul from the materials of the body ; that the wisdom 
of the philosopher counselled him to keep the soul 
always as isolated from the mortal parts as possible, in 
order that he should secure to himself the greatest 
pleasure : this, we inferred ; now are we prepared to 
understand that which before we could not prove. 

Simmias. It is well recalled, Socrates. It was myself 
who admitted that there exist two classes of pleasures, 
namely, such as come of agreeable bodily sensations, 
and others with which bodily parts seem to have no 
association. Also, it was agreed to, that pure knowl- 
edge might only come when the soul denied all office 
of reason on the part of the body. It was, as well, 
agreed that purification consists in this, namely, in ac- 
customing the soul to collect itself by itself, on all sides, 
apart from the body, and to dwell, so far as it can, in 
a present and in a future, alone by itself, delivered, as 
it were, from the shackles of the body. 

Soc. If I mistake not, Simmias, it was an inference 
that a wise man could have no fear of death ; on the 
contrary, that it was the part of philosophy to court a 
dissolution of the mortal ties, seeing that only in such 
a dissolution could the soul obtain its freedom. 

Ceb. It is not to be forgotten, Socrates, that, dissatis- 
fied with this conclusion, it was even I who suggested 
2* B 



1 8 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

that there might be no soul apart from body — that the 
day in which a body dies, soul is dispersed and vanishes 
like breath or smoke. 

Sot. You say right, Cebes ; the memory of the objec- 
tion has not left me ; and now, with clearer vision, are 
we to take up the arguments where, together, we laid 
them down. Heed, my friend; we will get knowl- 
edge of the soul in learning what it is not. The cen- 
tury that marks our present meeting having in it a 
fulness of positive research, such as was not found with 
our master Anaxagoras, or with any that preceded him, 
we find ourselves as men standing upon high ground ; 
around us, and within us, is that which shows, with an 
irrefutable plainness, as it would seem, wjiat are the 
meaning and end of scientific inquiry; a knowledge 
which we are led to perceive had first to be arrived at 
in order to the possibility of recognizing anything that 
might have existence beyond the material. 

Ceb. Shall we not begin with the beginning, Soc- 
rates ? 

Soc. It is well put, Cebes, seeing that they listen who 
were not before auditors. We recall to ourselves, and 
to these other, that, previous to the school of the Ionian 
philosophers, — of which Thales was the founder, — man 
had not attempted any inquiry into himself or into the 
manner or matter of his composition ; the world was ac- 
cepted by him as he found it, and, like unto a tree or 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 1 9 

rock, he rested in that in which he found nutrition and 
development. 

But to Thales came the inclination leading to inquiry, 
" Who and what is Thales? ' ' This, we remember, was the 
question ever present with the sage. But Thales could 
find on the earth, or in the universe, nothing which 
seemed to him so potent and so omnipresent as moist- 
ure. Water, he declared, therefore, — and, as it would 
seem, most naturally and plausibly, — to be the one 
component of the world. A man, he said, was made 
up of water, the earth is water, the gods themselves are 
water; and all was well argued and weir spoken, for 
according to the light so was the judgment. 

Next we are to refer to Anaximenes, the successor, 
shall we call him, of Thales. The pupil of Anaximander 
did not agree, however, with his predecessor. A some- 
thing more persistent than water he thought Air to be ; 
so in this element, — as he considered it, — he affirmed 
was to be found the one component of man and world 
and God. Wherever life is, there also, said Anaxi- 
menes, is to be found respiration; where no air is, 
there is death. 

Ceb. And Heraclitus denied the conclusions of both 
his Ionian brothers. 

Soc. Well remembered, Cebes ; the Ephesian did in 
truth differ widely from those who went before in their 
conclusions. Fire, he affirmed to be the one component 



20 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

of the world. A spontaneous force and activity resided, 
he said, in fire : Neither by God, nor by man, is God 
or man or world ; all are of an ever-living fire, in due 
measure self-enkindled, and in due measure self-extin- 
guished. Yet see, O Cebes, all the Ionians agreed in 
this, namely, that there existed a universal principle, 
this principle abiding the same, no matter how multi- 
tudinous the changes ; and, indeed, in this lies the gist 
of the Ionian philosophy. 

Sim. We are right, Socrates, in accepting that the 
error of this school lay in the unreliability of the means 
employed by it to understand ? 

Soc. We are right indeed, Simmias. The Ionians 
recognized no source of knowledge apart from the 
senses of the organic man : what these senses exhibited 
to them they affirmed to be truth. Thus, the Ionian 
philosophy means the judgment that comes of seeing, 
hearing, tasting, smelling, of general and special touch ; 
these being the senses that pertain to man as an animal, 
and being the instruments employed by the school, 
which we consider, to acquire its conclusions. But, 
even in the far-away days, it was not a difficult matter 
for us to perceive the fallacies of Ionian judgments, in- 
asmuch as it was of self-exhibition that truth resided 
not in the judgments of senses simply animal in their 
import ; for while it was that a man might very well say 
what any certain thing appeared to him to be, yet very 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 21 

little inquiry elicited that no two men could possibly 
see the same thing in exactly the same manner ; just 
as it is not seen of any two that in physiognomy they 
exactly resemble each other. To the Ionians we are to 
give, however, a credit which justly belongs to them, 
for having opened the epoch of philosophic inquiry 
(all other people rested in some theology or mythology), 
but this award is all that belongs to them. And who, 
Simmias, are we to honor for an advancing step, if not 
Diogenes? for from whom, if not from the Apollonian, 
got the great Anaxagoras that cue which enabled him 
to declare that, while it might very well be that Anax- 
imenes was right in teaching that the world was made 
of air, yet the universe was seen to be full of the ex- 
pressions of arrangement, and that such direction could 
not possibly reside in a simple ? See, said the Greek, 
all that man looks upon is found to be ordered in the 
best and most beautiful manner ; and without Reason 
this would be impossible. It must be, therefore, that 
the air is a compound, and in it resides consciousness. 

Ceb. Neither are we to forget, Socrates, that noble 
" Argument of Design " made by yourself, which to-day 
seems as impressive as when, two thousand years back, 
Plato wrote it out for the Athenians. 

Soc. We may let that go, Cebes ; yet no more right- 
fully was I in debt a cock to Esculapius than does the 
philosopher of to-day owe an oblation to the Lydian 



22 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

Anaxagoras. We are not to detract from credit due 
Diogenes; but we may not fail to recognize in the 
Lydian the planter of that seed out of which have grown 
the umbrageous branches under which discourse the 
modern peripatetics. All, said Anaxagoras, was chaos 
until intelligence (Mind) entered into matter. Yet 
heed, Cebes, for here we are to make mention of the 
paradox of the citizen of Clazomenae. Agreeing with 
the Ionians, he taught, as you remember, that all knowl- 
edge comes through the senses ; opposing the Ionians, 
and agreeing with Xenophanes, he declared that all 
knowledge received through the senses is delusive. 
Was he right, Cebes, in the first, or in the last, of his 
premises ? Or, of possibility, is the paradox more seem- 
ing than real ? 

Ceb. Why not, Socrates ? 

Soc. It is to be assumed that reason leads not to 
truth \ this, because office is to be denied to reason save 
as such office is an associate of the senses. Reason is 
a thing wholly and strictly influenced by the character 
of brain organization, and it is the case, as has most 
wisely been affirmed by the eleatic Parmenides, that the 
highest degree of thought comes from the highest de- 
gree of brain organization. How, then, should it be 
otherwise than that reason is a false measure, seeing 
that it is a something dependent on the accidents of a 
construction, and not a thing immutable and unchange- 
able in itself? 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 2$ 

Ceb. But what is to be the argument, Socrates ? 

Soc. This, Cebes : that reason cannot be a reliable 
staff upon which to lean, seeing that by no possibility 
can this show the same thing in the same manner to 
any two persons. That it is not by means of a man's 
mind that he can come to know himself: yet that there 
exists a means through which a man may as surely 
arrive at such knowledge, as that the almighty God is a 
self-acquainted entity. 

Ceb. To know thus much, Socrates, would seem to 
possess one with the wisdom of life. 

Soc. It was not unlikely so esteemed by the oracle. 
Give heed, Cebes, and you too, Simmias, and Apollo- 
dorus, and all others who would make an excursion. 
It was one of no less repute than our other master, 
Pythagoras, who persisted in declaring that in the 
number One was to be settled the principle of existence. 
Has any one understood the Samian ? Did the mathe- 
matician comprehend himself? Come, my friends; it 
is in the arcana of nature, and not amid the marts of 
these busy moderns that to-day we find ourselves. Let 
us, unmindful of aberrant lessons, set ourselves to the 
contemplation of that wherein exists, and out of which 
arises, all instruction. Let us renew our converse con- 
cerning the Soul — for if it be that any among us shall 
find himself assisted to the apprehension of this 
Totality, then in truth must it be that life may con- 



24 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

tain no mysteries, or possess no riddles, the solutions to 
which this favored one shall not find within himself. 
It is a place of quiet and profound peace, this in which 
we find ourselves. A cemetery, people call it ; these 
many stones scattered around cover, they say, dust that 
is dead. Ah ! happy provision of nature that all this 
earth has lost understanding of fevers that preyed on it 
and which consumed it — yet that it is dust for which 
new wings are fledging. But wisdom is not in a grave, 
Cebes, and therefore may not arise out of it. Yet, of all 
seats to be sought by the contemplative, none may 
have preference over that where tombstones are found 
under the willows. Heed, my friends ; here evidently 
is the grave of one who consumed the privileges of 
existence in eating, drinking, and sleeping. Perhaps 
his dog rots with him. Why not ? a dog eats and drinks 
and sleeps, and then. rots. — "Was born" — "Died" — 
this is all the history. Here is a monument, a mauso- 
leum made up of many pieces ; perhaps it represents 
well the life of the sleeper — a piece here, and a piece 
there, stolen from the happiness of other people. There 
are blurs in the marble — not fewer, perhaps, than were 
in the life — yet, as marble turns to dust, white and 
black go together — the black spots are fading as well 
from the mold beneath. Nature will again try the 
quarry — hoping for better productions. 

Here lies one, pronounced by his marble, an orator. 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY, 2$ 

No memories tell us beyond the name. Has his breath, 
Cebes, gone with the winds, and has not Anaximenes 
his own ? 

This is the grave of one who wrote many books, but 
nothing has been left above ground; it is a grave, 
indeed, Cebes, and so Matter must try in fresh form 
for immortality,— the many verses were lines from the 
mind; mind is a function of the brain; a brain is 
dust — no soul moved the fingers of this writer. 

How great, my friends, must have been the wealth 
that reared the pile we now look upon : yet the name 
it bears has no familiar sound. — A life, no doubt, was 
this, which took into itself a multitude of other lives — 
consuming them, not for immortality, but for the 
purposes of nature — correlating, correlating, yet all 
to no end, — and so all these many lives which lie 
beneath the stone have alone the meaning of the mold 
of the trunk of this great cherry-tree, which, in its season, 
produced not, and which, as is fitting, rots not less 
humbly than the man as it lies in the shade of his 
marble. Yet, perhaps, another period shall serve to 
unite the dust of man and tree, and who will deny that 
something may not come of the union? — A cherry, 
perhaps; or, maybe, a man of such stature that the 
God shall find fitting residence in him — who shall 
say? 

What a great multitude of graves, and yet, all name- 
3 



26 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

less, — but this is in the way of nature : a million seeds 
of the thistle-down scattered broadcast ; a million ova 
given to the waters running in from the sea. Which of 
the multitude of seeds shall produce a plant? which 
ovum bring forth a fish ? It is a blessed privilege of 
man, my friends, that he lives not -after the manner of 
the chance of thistle-down or fish. The man that 
craves immortality may possess himself of it, and in 
exact proportion with his craving and his longing will 
he share of it ; and when immortality comes to a man, 
then has come, as well, eternity. So it is that in each 
day such a man experiences the fulness of living; 
a day, to such an one, is as a thousand years, and a 
thousand years might not seem different from a day ; 
the mortal has become subjective to the immortal, and 
the physical man ceases to have concern or care about 
what are called life and death, for to his consciousness 
has come the knowledge that in these there is no dis- 
tinction. The man whom the God individualizes has lost 
himself in God ; his harmony is in the hand that strikes 
the chords of his organism. Such a man loses con- 
sciousness of himself in exact proportion as the God occu- 
pies him. Is it to be wondered at that such become in- 
different to the body ? Is a God to be ornamented with 
a silken hat and shoe-buckles ? Or is he to be esteemed 
singular in that his ways differ from those of animals? 
And the difference in men lies simply in this, that 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 27 

some cry diligently to the God that they may be occu- 
pied ; but others deny the God, and will not let them- 
selves be merged into him; and so, remaining as all 
other purely matter and force composed things, these 
may not, of possibility, find themselves of different 
constitution or signification. To such, death would 
seem to mean just what disintegration means to a 
stone, or what decomposition means to the dog or 
horse. There is here nothing that can retain a sense 
of individuality, and when we bury such from our 
sight we have given their personality to nature. 

Of all inquiries which it concerns men to make, that 
is the most important which considers the soul — the 

Ego. 

" Ignoratur enim, quae sit natura animi : 
Nati sit : an, contra, nascentibus insinuetur ; 
Et simul intereat nobiscum morte diremter; 
An tenebras Orci visat, vastaque lacunas, 
An pecudes alias divinitas insinuet se." 

And is the poet right in thus declaring man's igno- 
rance of himself? Whether the soul be born with a 
man, or be infused into him at birth ? Whether it dies 
with the body and with the material returns to earth ? 
Or whether it passes into other animals ? Not right, 
but wrong, is he ; for it does expose itself that a soul 
may be known as is a body, and he who finds himself 



28 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

attuned may turn his eyes inward and behold the Ego. 
This did Plotinus and his fellow mystics make plain at 
a period allied with the time when Phaedo conversed 
with us ; for did not the soul of Philo come to a sur- 
face where it was seen of such as might behold it ? 
And has not this same thing been observed, only, how- 
ever, after a different manner, by the wise Lucretius, 
who declares for a nature that is corporeal of the mind ? 

Corpoream naturam animi esse necesse est 
Corporis quoniam telis istique laborat. 

It is not unknown to us, Cebes, neither was it un- 
familiar in the olden time, that philosophy, whether 
theological, positive, or metaphysical, advances only, 
and always, towards a single something, which some- 
thing is felt and recognized to be all things in itself 
— the origin and cause of life — the entity, of which 
images and signs are the expression. And furthermore, 
the learned fail not to understand that while multitu- 
dinous names are applied by the ages to this entity — to 
this abstract something — yet it has ever had, and may 
only continue to have, a common meaning and signifi- 
cation to all. Thus, whether the appellation be "Ego," 
as used by ourselves; "One," as it was named by 
Pythagoras; "Mind," as our master Anaxagoras called 
it; or whatever the title employed — as "Idea" by 
our pupil Plato; Ormus, by the Persian; "Brama" 



OR A TALK IN A CE METER Y. 29 

by the Indian ; Zeus, as by the Macedonian : or, to 
come to these modern people, "Idee," as by the Ger- 
man Hegel; "Substance," as by the wonderful Spinoza 
— no matter what the name, a common thing and prin- 
ciple stands out and forth as the representative, and 
through no argument may this one be resolved into the 
many, except as such many pertain to phenomena. 
Heed, Cebes; if I am wrong as to this conclusion, are 
their none amongst you who will refute me ? Truly are 
we not without learning sufficient to a refutation, if any 
refutation there be. Have we not together studied 
"De Rerum Natura," peering with Lucretius through 
lights and shadows? Have we not with Shungie 
plucked from the orbit, and eaten, the left eye of a 
great chief with hope of increasing the outlook of our 
own ? What has Plutarch told of Osiris and Isis that 
we do not know? And what has Vishnu Purana 
spoken of Brahm that we have not comprehended? 
Have we not heeded the Yasna, drank of the waters of 
the Talmud, and with a "John" searched through thQ 
mysteries of the Logos ? Notice the great rock, Cebes, 
upon whose broad face we now sit holding discourse \ 
see the sun-illumined stream winding its way amid the 
green things of its shores ; look at the brown ridges in 
the ploughed land out of which just now are rising the 
potato stems ; behold yon clump of deep-tangled briars 
in which the birds are holding high revel. And still 
3* 



30 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

as well, Cebes, let memory carry thy gaze to that water 
on which together we have so often looked from the 
Piraeus ; these things, to me, Cebes, are living beings. 
Is not the soul, said Bharata to Sauriva's king, one, 
uniform, perfect, exempt from birth, omnipresent, un- 
decaying, mode of true knowledge, disassociated with 
unrealities ? Ignorance alone it is which enables Maya 
to impress the mind with sense of individuality ; for as 
soon as that is dispelled, it is known that severalty exists 
not, and that there is nothing but one individual whole. 

Ceb. I, for one, listen not further, if it is designed to 
show that severalty exists not. 

Soc. Foolish Cebes, are we not in ourselves argument 
to the contrary? What everlasting peace, Cebes, seems 
the fixedness of this great stone; how the potato stems 
seem as if coming forth to a feast of sunshine, and 
which indeed they do ; how glad-voiced are the birds 
in the briar-tangle. I think, as we sit here, Cebes, that 
these things are as though the Omnipresent has said, 
I will be all voice, all ear, all eye. For think you, 
Cebes, that God could exist, and not be glad ? And is 
not creation glad? In what resides gladness, if not in 
fitness? And is not all fitted? Winter to summer, 
spring to harvest ; the water to the valley ; the tuber 
to the earth; birds to briar-tangles, and the rock to 
solidity? — But this touches not our argument. Heed, 
my friend, I will show you something not less strange 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 3 1 

than severalty existing in individuality. Follow closely, 
else will you not understand me. 

Ceb. The argument is to show "Who, and what is 
man," past, present, and to come. 

Soc. You are right, Cebes ; what he is, what he has 
been, and what he will be. 

Ceb. By an a priori or an a posteriori showing. 

Soc. By both — backwards and forwards, forwards 
and backwards. 

Imprimis, Cebes, it may not be denied, and must 
therefore be admitted, that the judgments made by a 
Thing cannot pass beyond that which is the capability 
possessed by the Thing to form or make a judgment. 
Such capability, as belonging to man — to the natural 
man — is seen to reside in the number, character, and 
nature of the Senses : therefore, man's means of know- 
ing, having existence alone in the senses, he can opine 
of the world only as the world exhibits itself through 
these senses. 

Ceb. This is not to be denied. 

Soc. Judgment, then, is as the media which shows 
the thing that is to be judged ? 

Ceb. Why not? 

Soc. It was one of not less repute than Protagoras 
who affirmed, " that things are what they seem to be." 
Is this right, Cebes ? 

Ceb. It would seem to be right, Socrates. 



32 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

Soc. When a man looks upon the earth ftirough a 
piece of red-colored glass, the ground is seen to be red ; 
or if the pigment be blue, then is everything blue ; or if 
green, then all is green. Is the thing looked upon, 
Cebes, of all these shades ? 

Ceb. By Jupiter, it may be none of them. 

Soc. Then are we to say that the sophist is wrong, 
and that a thing is not necessarily what it seems to 
be? 

Ceb. This may but be right ; but what say you, Soc- 
rates, that a thing is ? 

Soc. I would put it in this way : A thing is, to the 
uses of the senses, what to the senses it seems to be. 

Ceb. It is undeniable. 

Soc. Judgment is seen, then, to be the same as com- 
prehension ? 

Ceb. It is the same, assuredly, Socrates. 

Soc. If then it be the case that a man possesses no 
capability beyond the media which signify comprehen- 
sion, it is impossible that he arrive at truth ? 

Ceb. It has been proved to be impossible. 

Soc. Say rather, Cebes, it would appear that it may 
be so proven. 

Ceb. But the argument is to show that a man may 
arrive at a knowledge of himself. Did you not just say, 
Socrates, that a man may come to such knowledge as 
surely as that the Almighty God is a self-acquainted 
entity? 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 33 

Soc. You quote me not wrong, Cebes ; that is what I 
said. 

Ceb. But you have just exhibited that the senses are 
the only media of knowledge, and at the same time you 
have shown that information coming through the senses 
cannot be reliable. Wherein do you differ, Socrates, 
from Anaxagoras ? 

Soc. Not so fast, Cebes ; I said the senses of organic 
life. Has a man not more than these? 

Ceb. By Jupiter, I understand nothing of your 
meaning. 

Soc. Is there any difference, Cebes, between a man 
and an ox ? 

Ceb. Assuredly it would seem not, Socrates, provid- 
ing that the two be found endowed alike with common 
senses. 

Soc. But is it not affirmed of the one that it is mortal, 
and of the other that it is immortal? How is this, 
Cebes ? Is the affirmative true, or is it the case that if 
the one be mortal the other likewise must be, or if im- 
mortal, so also must be the other ? 

Ceb. I may only maintain that unless some difference 
be shown to exist, what the one is, that also must the 
other be. 

Soc. What do you understand, Cebes, by these senses 
of organic life of which we are speaking ? 

Ceb. That there are six means through which a man 



34 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

learns — as sight, taste, smell, hearing, and touch, the 
latter being of two kinds, special and general. 

Soc. And you know of no other media of informa- 
tion either for men or brutes ? 

Ceb. What others can there be ? 

Soc. And the brutes, alike with men, you will main- 
tain, are found possessed of these senses ? 

Ceb. It requires not, that attempt be made to show 
that this is the case. 

Soc. You must hold then, of necessity, Cebes, that 
if Hades exists, brutes, equally with men, are its occu- 
pants. 

Ceb. You say right, Socrates ; this I hold. 

Soc. But is not man, some men — yourself, let us say, 
Cebes, to make a good example — found possessed of a 
concept of certain things of which brutes never have 
exhibited expression? 

Ceb. By Jupiter ! you say right, Socrates. Of the 
Thunderer himself, as an illustration. 

Soc. Well exampled, Cebes, yet no man has ever 
touched, tasted, smelled, seen, or heard a God. 

Ceb. Pardon, Socrates. On such showing it is im- 
possible that a man can know that there is a God ; yet 
it is seen that a multitude of even the most simple peo- 
ple possess such knowledge. 

Soc. But not all people ? 

Ceb. By Jupiter ! no, Socrates ; some of the Positiv- 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 35 

ists, for example. But are you to pretend that there is 
a difference in men ? or, to put it in other words, that 
the men who do not know God are like the brutes, and 
that there are others who possess a something not com- 
mon to this organic life of which we are speaking ? these 
being the ones who have this knowledge ? 

Soc. Must this not be the case, Cebes, unless that 
you can show that God is to be known either by being 
touched, smelled, tasted, heard, or seen ? 

Ceb. On the showing of the argument, I know not 
how to deny it. 

Soc. But you affirm that some men know of God ? 

Ceb. Wherever man exists, there is found, in some 
form or other, this knowledge. 

Soc. How is it as to where other animals exist ? 

Ceb. It would not seem that a knowledge of God is 
found apart from man. 

Soc. Is this not still another paradox that you are 
making, Cebes ? You see and say that two things are 
alike, and yet in the same breath declare a dissimilarity. 
Let me see, however, if I can help you out, for if things 
are alike, then surely can they not be unlike, and if they 
are unlike it is quite impossible that they should be alike. 
There is, then, difference or no difference. 

Ceb. How not ? 

Soc. And if it be not the case that brutes know of 
God, then neither can man have such knowledge, unless 
that the one differs from the other ? 



36 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

Ceb. So it would seem to be, Socrates. 

Soc. Neither, unless a difference can be shown, is it 
possible to deny immortality to brutes, if such a prerog- 
ative be insisted on for man ? 

Ceb. It is not possible. 

Soc. We must show then that a man possesses some- 
thing that the brute does not, if we would have any 
reason for believing the former immortal ? 

Ceb. This, Socrates, must surely be shown. 

Soc. But in such showing, might it not come out that 
there are many men not unlike brutes ? 

Ceb. How not ? Melitus, for example. 

Soc. What is to be done with such men, Cebes ? 

Ceb. Such, by the showing, are not men, but brutes ; 
unless, indeed, some other name be selected as a mark to 
them who have this something not possessed by the 
others. 

Soc. You shall make what distinction you will, Cebes, 
but you will find the line a hard one to draw. 

Ceb. Give name, Socrates, to this something which 
makes a distinction of such importance. 

Soc. It is a something never seen in the brute, not 
always in man, yet which finds that which is capable of 
receiving and holding it alone in the human being. 
Suppose that we call it Mind, Cebes ? 

Ceb. We will call it mind, Socrates, if so be this 
please you, 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 37 

Soc. But what do you esteem as mind, Cebes ? 

Ceb. Mind is that which moves matter, or it is a 
something that comes out of matter, and which thinks. 

Soc. Then it cannot be mind ; for not only brutes, but 
even vegetables, possess this you describe, and our pre- 
mise now is that human beings are alone capable to it. 
Shall we then try again, Cebes ? and might we venture 
to name this something Intelligence ? 

Ceb. You mock me, Socrates ? 

Soc. I appeal to Simmias. Are we not at a dead-lock, 
Simmias, unless that we discover a something in man 
never met with in other forms of life ? 

Sim. It needs not to be argued, Socrates. 

Ceb. It is not at all difficult, Socrates, to perceive 
that this last is not the thing we seek, for intelligence 
characterizes, to a greater or lesser extent, all animals. 

Soc. You correct me happily, Cebes; it cannot be 
intelligence. Might it not, however, be the something 
that we call Innate, as, for example, the religious senti- 
ment ? 

Ceb. It is this, Socrates, for surely will it not be 
possible to find the religious in brutes. 

Soc. Yet, as I bethink me, Cebes, it cannot be an 
innate sentiment or thing, because, as we were com- 
pelled to agree, it must be a something found alone in 
man, and it just comes to me to perceive that innate 
and instinct mean the same; and as, undeniably, the 
4 



38 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

instinctive is more marked in the lower animals than 
in man, the advantage would be given to the brutes by 
the admission of such a premise. 

Ceb. By Jupiter, Socrates, I see not how it could be 
otherwise. 

Soc. Shall we call it, then, Individuality ? 

Ceb. Neither this, Socrates, for one has not to ob- 
serve for much space of time even the most insignificant 
of insects before that he perceives an inclination in each 
to look out for itself. 

Soc. Shall we call it, then, a Sense ? 

Ceb. This truly, Socrates, providing that we have 
not already exhausted these attributes, and that it may 
be shown there is a seventh sense, which sense is pecu- 
liar to man. 

Soc. Has a brute, Cebes, the quality of Apprehen- 
sion? 

Ceb. Meaning by this, what, Socrates ? 

Soc. Meaning a perception of things which are not 
to be tasted, smelled, heard, seen, or felt. 

Ceb. Surely, Socrates, no brute ever exhibited pos- 
session of such a quality. 

Soc. Neither brutes of high degree nor of low ? 

Ceb. Neither reptiles which are the lowest, nor 
elephants which are the highest, Socrates. 

Soc. Is any character of knowledge to be found in 
man which may not possibly have come to him through 
the inlets of the organic senses ? 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY, 39 

Ceb. I hesitate to make answer, Socrates. 

Soc. Yet you say that man knows of the existence of 
God. Does man comprehend God, Cebes? 

Ceb. Why not? 

Soc. We have been compelled to see that to com- 
prehend a thing is to have judgment of it ; and, as well, 
did we acquaint ourselves with the fact that judgment 
is that perception which arises out of the uses of the 
animal senses. How then, Cebes, is it possible to have 
comprehension of a thing never seen, felt, tasted, heard, 
or smelled ? 

Ceb. How not, Socrates ? 

Soc. But man knows God, and yet it is seen that he 
may not have come to such acquaintance through com- 
prehension. Must there not, then, of necessity, Cebes, 
be an inlet of knowledge to man, which is a something 
distinct from the senses which subserve the purposes of 
his needs as an animal ? 

Ceb. We must deny that he knows God, or other- 
wise agree to what you suggest, Socrates. 

Soc. We assume as undeniable the responsibility of 
the senses of organic life to the offices of an organism 
in which they are found : the Sight shows the precipice, 
Sensation distinguishes fire. This, Cebes, you under- 
stand ? 

Ceb. Nothing may be more plain. 

Soc. Comprehension, then, resides in reason. Let 



40 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

us see how very fallible a thing this reason is. Reason 
may not justly and truly explain even that which is 
within the province of its judgment, inasmuch as it has 
its lessons alone through the senses; and the nature, 
number, and character of these so vary that it is im- 
possible that like impressions be conveyed to all. Thus, 
an apple is a thing that has taste, or, it is a thing that 
is without taste, according as it is judged of by a man 
who possesses the peculiar appreciative sense or who is 
deficient in it. It is a thing having odor, or, it is a 
thing scentless, — as olfaction happens to be present or 
absent. No man may take it on himself to describe an 
apple ; and yet, whatever an apple seems to be to any 
particular individual, that same thing it surely is to that 
person. To a blind man an apple is a fruit having 
taste, smell, sound, substance, but it is a thing minus 
color ; to him who is paralytic it is a something yielding 
no impression to touch ; to the deaf it has no crackle in 
it when pressed ; if a man could be found entirely defi- 
cient in the senses of an organism, an apple would be, to 
this one, a nothing. 

Ceb. Or if a man could be found having an added 
sense or senses, an> apple would be to such what it has 
never been discovered to be by any other ? 

Soc. This surely would be the case, Cebes ; a thing 
is according to the senses by which it is judged. 

Ceb. Then is it not the case that things are not, in 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 41 

themselves, but that the existence lies wholly in a some- 
thing that is a percipient ? 

Soc. Wiser than we, my dear Cebes, hold this. 

Ceb. Who ? to name one or more. 

Soc. The subjective philosophers, Plato, among the 
ancients; he whom they call the Idealist, among the 
moderns. 

Ceb. What do such say ? 

Soc. Your memory is strangely at fault, Cebes. Let 
me recall your wandering wits. Heed, if what I quote 
be not of familiar sound. 

Idea is the essence or reality of a thing. For instance, 
there is a multiplicity of beds and tables. 

" Certainly. 7 ' 

But these two kinds are comprised, one under the 
idea of a bed, and the other under the idea of a table ? 

"Without doubt." 

And we say that the carpenter who makes one of 
these articles, makes the bed or the table according to 
the idea he has of each. For he does not make the 
idea itself. That is impossible. 

"Truly that is impossible." 

Well, now, what name shall we bestow on the work- 
man whom I am going to name ? 

"What workman?" 

Him who makes what all other workmen make sepa- 
rately. 

4* 



42 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

" You speak of a powerful man." 

Patience ! you will admire him still more. This 
workman has not only the talent of making all the 
works of art, but also all the works of nature, plants, 
animals, everything else, — in a word, himself. He 
makes the heaven, the earth, the gods, everything in 
heaven, earth, or hell. 

" You speak of a wonderful workman, truly/ ' 

You seem to doubt me. But tell me, do you think 
there is no such workman ? or do you think that in one 
sense any one could do all this, but in another no one 
could ? Could you not yourself succeed in a certain 
way? 

"In what way?" 

It is not difficult ; it is often done, and in a short time. 
Take a mirror and turn it round on all sides. In an 
instant you will have made the sun, the earth, yourself, 
the animals and plants, works of art, and all we 
mentioned. 

"Yes, the images, the appearances, but not the real 
things.' ' 

Very well, you comprehend my opinion. The 
painter is a workman of this class, is he not ? 

" Certainly. 1 ' 

You will tell me that he makes -nothing real, although 
he makes a bed in a certain way ? 

"Yes; but it is only an appearance, an image.' ' 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 43 

And the carpenter ; is the bed which he makes any- 
thing more than a certain bed ; it is not that which is 
the idea or essence of the bed ? 

"It is not.' ' 

If, then, he does not make the idea of a bed, he makes 
nothing real, but only something which represents that 
which really exists. And if any one maintain that the 
carpenter's work has a real existence, he will be in 
error. 

Ceb. But is there not something in way of demon- 
stration to show that the world is not merely sub- 
jective ? 

Soc. The demonstration lies within a man's self. 
That which thinks, Is.* The nervous system of a man is 

*Rene Des Cartes, the founder of modern philosophy (1596), 
gained what seems to be a strictly reliable basis upon which to 
construct a system when he assumed that, in order to find truth, 
one must start in the denial of any or every thing that has not in 
itself the demonstration of its own reality. Any one who attempts 
such manner of inquiry will be compelled to find, with the Tor- 
rainean, that an only thing which possesses such a capability is 
self-consciousness as this exists in Thinking. To Think, is 
necessarily TO BE. Hence the famous Cartesian aphorism, 
" Cogito, ergo sum." Farther on in this dialogue we shall assume 
to show that it is the brain which thinks; the thinking being an 
organic expression. If we succeed in such showing, we demon- 
strate that matter exists. Surely this would be an undeniable 
conclusion, if To Think is To Be. That which exists — being 
evident to the senses of an animal — is necessarily objective ; that 
is, it is objective in the same way and manner as that which is the 
percipient is objective. 



44 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

That which thinks; the nervous system is Matter — 
Matter makes up the world. But whist, Cebes, this all 
in good turn. You doubt not, my friend, that a judg- 
ment which is not to be relied upon to tell us of an 
apple which one holds in the hand, stands in very little 
place when one attempts to reason about God ? 

Ceb. I see plainly that judgment can tell nothing at 
all about God. It is evident, that by learning, God 
cannot be found out, or that search will not discover 
him. 

Soc. Still, he is known ? 

Ceb. He is known indeed, Socrates. 

Soc. Let us hasten to the understanding of that which 
they who apprehend, tell us. 

Ceb. But first, Socrates, I check my curiosity to 
understand somewhat more of this subjectiveness. What 
says the modern to whom you have alluded ? 

Soc. It is not delay, Cebes ; for to know of Berkeley 
and of Idealism, is to find ourselves put far on the way. 

Ceb. If I am not wrong, Socrates, this man was 
accounted as possessed of great virtue ? 

Soc. Virtuous and learned and noble, was he, above 
all the men of his time, Cebes. ' And yet all this good- 
ness was, perhaps, no merit to the man. 

Ceb. You speak a paradox. 

Soc. The martyr was a god. 

Ceb. It is well, Socrates, that this is two thousand 
years after, 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 45 

Soc. Was not Christ a God, Cebes ? 

Ceb. You blaspheme, Socrates. 

Soc. Save your strictures, Cebes, and answer ; yes or 
no. 

Ceb. Only the foolish deny it. 

Soc. And was not Christ a man ? 

Ceb. Meaning by this, what, Socrates ? 

Soc. You are dull, Cebes; meaning that his body 
would bleed when wounded, and that his flesh when 
pierced and torn would breed scars ; meaning that his 
locomotion was by means of muscles, and that his 
uprightness in posture lay in the foundations of a skele- 
ton. 

Ceb. He truly was born, and grew apace, as other 
men. 

Soc. But he was not like other men. 

Ceb. You confound and confuse me, Socrates. And 
if I was not in confidence as to the coming out, I would 
fear to be longer a listener. 

Soc. The God and Christ are one, Cebes; and 
withal, England has seen no such God-man as Berkeley. 

Ceb. How could people see a God ? 

Soc. Not with their eyes, Cebes ; so that all who had 
not other means of beholding, called the good bishop 
a fool. 

Ceb. It was natural, then, that Christ should have 
been deemed an impostor? 



46 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

Soc. Like may only be known by like ; such alone 
called him God as were themselves more than mortal. 

Ceb. Must a man, then, be as a God in order to know 
God? 

Soc. Your judgment shall be after the argument, 
Cebes. But heed of the Idealist. Here was a man 
who tutored his body into such complete subjection to 
the infinite, that in the end he lost consciousness of the 
existence of his mortal parts, and came to deny that 
anything like matter had being outside of the percep- 
tions. How, Cebes, should such an one be tempted as 
are common men — meaning, by being tempted, to 
exhibit animal appetites and weakness — seeing that 
these appetites were not present with him, their place 
being occupied by that other something of which we 
are to discourse? 

The philosophers, Cebes, are often ridiculed for dis- 
tinguishing between the not self and the self; but hold 
you ever in mind, that it is the philosophers who are 
the wise men, and that they are the silly who deride 
their distinctions. A Nearches cannot pound a Zeno 
in a mortar. 

Imprimis, Cebes, it is to be understood that bodily 
traits are of temperament, and of the disposition of parts ; 
so that, as the animal attributes of a man are concerned, 
the human differs in no respect from the common brute 
creation — the one race having alike with the other, 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 47 

passions, wants, and necessities; and having, for the 
direction, government, and provision of these, certain 
instincts which constitute the laws of an animal organi- 
zation. This being understood — and the truthfulness 
of it requires no controversy — it is to be recognized, 
that in the actions of men, unrestrained and uninfluenced, 
we are to expect that same difference which we perceive 
to distinguish the brutes ; these being found, mild or 
fierce, tractable or intractable, according to the humors 
of each. But heed, Cebes. A man is more, or better 
saying it, he may.be more, than an animal. To man 
there may be solicited that, which, when it is taken into 
him, and when it is allowed to become his director and 
guide, is found to introduce him to greater pleasure 
than any known to the instincts, and when a man courts 
this higher something as his supreme controller, giving 
himself up fully to its direction, he is led to find a hap- 
piness and an elevation in living of which the common 
man — the pointer of pins — knows nothing. 

And here it is, Cebes, that we are to find the origin 
of that idea of original sin about which men so un- 
necessarily bother themselves. It is not that in man 
exists an evil principle, unless indeed it can be shown 
that the instincts are evil ; and to show this, would be 
to discover error in the Creator. The rather is it, that 
things which are called of evil and depravity are of ill- 
seeming only through being brought into conflict with 



48 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

that which is of other origin and nature. Heed, my 
Cebes. We are to consider a wonderful paradox, namely, 
that a man may have a soul, and that a man may be 
without a soul ; and if such a distinction be shown to 
exist, it is seen that the difference between what is called 
a good man and what is esteemed a bad one, lies simply 
in this — that the one is a creature living solely and 
wholly in the laws of an animal organization ; the other 
has been raised through an added element into a some- 
thing higher. I will show you, Cebes, that what are 
called the faults and follies of the one class, are to be 
treated with that leniency with which we consider the 
vices of brutes ; it will, on the other hand, exhibit itself, 
that the actions of a God are to be judged by the 
attributes of a God. That then, which — when found 
in man — is deemed of evil in the abstract, will be seen 
to be nothing else than organization ; and it may not 
of possibility have any more of demerit in it than has 
the ferociousness of a panther's cub, or than is to be 
esteemed, as in itself commendable, the playfulness of a 
cat's kitten — both alike are expressions of organization, 
and the ferociousness is as natural as the gentleness, 
the bite as natural as the play. 

Ceb. By such showing no wrong is to be found ? 

Soc, By such showing, charity is to find sympathy for 
the" natural actions of animals, whether these animals be 
in shape like unto brutes or men. Heed, Cebes ! The 



OR A TALK IN A CE METER Y. 49 

law of the man is the law of the association in which he 
finds himself. Everything is wrong which produces 
discomfort; everything is right which yields pleasure. 
To distinguish, then, between pain and pleasure, is to 
discriminate between wrong and right. Evil and good 
are correlative, and the evil of to-day may well prove 
to be the good of the morrow, as, on the other hand, 
it has been often enough found that a good of one hour 
is the sting and smart of another. It was only a week 
back, as well we recall, that my horse, snapping his 
rein, did take to those strong swift strides, which, when 
practised in the fields of his pasturage, we have, to- 
gether, so often extolled, because of the metal and 
fleetness found in them ; yet did the road, upon which 
this time he ran, lead to a precipice ; and thus that 
which we had pronounced good proved an instrument 
of destruction. And may either of us forget the suffer- 
ing which came even to yourself, Cebes, from the abuse 
of things, natural and good in themselves ? When 
Lucon drowned himself at the spring, it was only that 
he employed unwisely and inexpediently a thing which, 
to all his previous years, had had for him the meaning 
of that very life which at the last it destroyed. So 
what was it that Zuras said of family ties grown cumber- 
some to him ? And did we not admit with him that 
he had natural right to tire of whom he would, and 
that he might, in the proprieties of the same nature, 
5 D 



SO TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

take up whatsoever of the new that he elected ? Yet 
this has not been found expedient by Zuras, for now is 
he seen to be of all men not only the most delinquent, 
but the one most dissatisfied and wretched. Is it not, 
then, wise, Cebes, that a man deny the directions of 
the instincts as hastily as possible ? not for the reason 
that these lead wrong, but because it is known that 
there are pleasanter and better ways in which one may 
walk. As for ourselves, we will assuredly not find that 
we are wrong in agreeing with Epicurus that the pleas- 
ures of the body are not to be compared with those 
of the soul, and while we may take to ourselves no 
credit for being of better natural parts than is Zuras, 
yet do we demonstrate, through what we get from life, 
that we are of wiser action ; for while it is seen that 
our friend has a home which is little different from a 
kennel, others — they who are opposite to him in prac- 
tice — do find his barren spot the most bountiful and 
gracious oasis of existence. And yet, Cebes, both 
kennel and home — as it is not to be denied — find 
their signification in a law of association : for did 
Zuras live where alone snarl dogs and foxes, and where 
the hospice is unknown, he might not discover the loss 
of anything — he would be poor to wretchedness ; albeit, 
he would know nothing of the absence of wealth. Is 
all this not well put by Herillus, where he so ably 
shows that circumstances and events change the mean- 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETER Y. 5 I 

ing of good, just as the same piece of brass might be- 
come a statue either of Alexander, or, — let us say, of 
Cebes? And was I not right when I gave it as an 
aphorism to Thaetetus, that whatever things appear 
just and honorable to each city, these are so to that 
city so long as it thinks them so ? 

There are demigods, Cebes, and these walk the 
earth, and in seeming are like common men ; but there 
is a great, even if an unseen, difference — they are 
not as common men. Who, in all Leyden, was like 
unto the student Heinsius, as he sat in the lap of 
eternity amongst the divine souls ? And what but the 
God carried u^Eneas in his flight from Dido ? It is not 
difficult to show that a man possesses, or may possess, 
a something, which pertains not to the capability of 
the brute. 

No error is so great, no one so destructive to the 
true purpose and intent of living, as that which con- 
siders what is ordinarily called success, as necessarily 
the true success. No advantage can be a true gain, in 
which the signification is temporary ; no accumulation 
can have the meaning of riches, where the coin has 
currency in the day alone on which it has been 
gathered; yet these are the advantages that a multi- 
tude seek, and which, when secured, receive the 
plaudits of a greater multitude. Is the meaning plain, 
Cebes ? Is it the soul which is to govern the body, or 



52 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

is it the body that is to govern the soul ? Or shall we 
consider that I spoke the full truth when I affirmed, 
formerly, that a soul while imprisoned in a body might 
not live its life of wisdom? It is a little thing, and 
quick done with, this present of ours, yet where is the 
man but that refuses to enjoy it ? Not that men are 
wise, and in an understanding of the transitory char- 
acter of a present, seek to lay up treasures for use in 
some other day that shall be longer; quite the con- 
trary — that other day is the last thing that enters into 
the calculation. Heed, Cebes, a demigod is that 
man whose soul is strong enough to coerce the body. 
As an example, a better, perhaps, might not be pointed 
out than this same Idealist, whose fulness and strength 
of soul were so great that he might not esteem matter 
as being anything else than a subjective existence ; and 
yet, my friend, all the learning of Cloyne's bishop 
did not save the great and good man from the slurs 
and innuendoes of the pin-pointers — but the ridicule 
did not make a pin-pointer out of the demigod. 

One is to understand of Idealism, Cebes, in under- 
standing that God's ways are not as are men's ways, and 
that in proportion as a human draws to himself a soul, 
so, in like proportion, does matter become annihilated 
to him. This, I think, is all, Cebes; although the 
philosophers, when they discourse of Idealism, do not 
put it after this manner, but speak rather somewhat thus : 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 53 

All sensation, they would say, is to be found within a 
man's self. What any one thinks that he sees or handles 
or hears, this he perceives within his own consciousness, 
and not as an object which has existence in itself. The 
existence of a thing lies in the idea of the thing ; and 
as an idea may only exist to the consciousness, so a 
thing cannot be anything else than subjective. 

Ceb. Would the Idealist say that a brick is not a 
brick, or that a tree which stands in one's way is not at 
all in the place where it seems to be? If he says thus, 
does he speak else than nonsense, Socrates ? 

Soc. You forget our own definition, Cebes: "a 
thing is, to the uses of the senses, what to the senses it 
seems to be. M Whether a thing exists as object or sub- 
ject, makes no jot of difference as the needs and neces- 
sities of the conscious man are concerned. A brick is 
found to answer the purpose of the wall, and what 
serves the meaning of fruit is plucked from a tree. 
One has no concern to trouble himself as to whether 
bricks or trees are external or internal. 

Ceb. You say that this founder was of great learn- 
ing? 

Soc. He was inspired, Cebes — as men are inspired 
who speak the words of the God within them. 

Ceb. I think, Socrates, that we have here come to 
an involvement from which we shall scarcely extricate 
ourselves. You accept, with Des-Cartes, that conscious- 
5* 



54 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

ness is existence, and you have declared your intention 
and ability to show that consciousness has existence 
alone in a brain, and that a brain is matter — transfer- 
ring thus existence from an idea to an object. Now you 
accept, as using the speech of the God, one who sep- 
arates consciousness from matter, denying any objective 
existence to the latter. See, Socrates, the God sep- 
arates what you put together. 

Soc. What if we should say, Cebes, that conscious- 
ness is subjective to the God ? 

Ceb. We are extricated, Socrates; and it is seen 
that the God makes a world by the simple act of turn- 
ing a thought to its creation. 

Soc. How would you explain this, Cebes ? 

Ceb. Nothing is easier. Objects being things having 
existence alone in consciousness, we have only to assume 
that in like manner consciousness is subjective to the 
mind of the God; just as you put it, Socrates; and 
thus, understanding, of our own consciousness, how 
things are made to us, we are at no loss in perceiving 
how the God, even by so simple a means as an act of 
thought, may make not only men and other animals, 
*but as well a world. Why, even a man, Socrates, can 
do much of the same thing, and indeed, according to 
this showing, he is constantly engaged in creating. 

Soc. Yet, Cebes, these Christians, among whom we 
find ourselves, dispute as to the ability of the God to 
resurrect their bodies, 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 55 

Ceb. Do such not see, Socrates, that in every dream 
they of themselves perform this miracle ? 

Soc. It is strange, Cebes ; but they see it not, even 
though it be so plain. But now that there are no 
Eleven to prevent, let us separate, for I perceive that 
Apollodorus gives much evidence of weariness. To- 
morrow we will have the argument and demonstration, 
and with the God's help we shall not then part until 
we know, even as we are known. 




SOUL. 



57 




THE SOUL. 



Soc. The argument, Cebes, is founded on the quality 
of what we have defined as Apprehension. 

As man knows himself and finds himself, so he is 
able, directly and indirectly, to recognize the ex- 
istence of seven senses: i, of Sight; 2, of Taste; 3, 
of Smell; 4, of Hearing; 5, of Special Touch; 6, of 
General Sensation ; and 7, of Apprehension. The first 
six of these, as we have felt ourselves compelled to 
acknowledge, are common to man and the animals at 
large. The seventh is not necessarily a possession of 
man, yet, when met with, is found in the human alone. 

Whatever, in reality, things may he, things are to 
the uses of the senses what to the senses they seem to 
be ; and a thing, anything, howsoever different it may 
appear to different people, is, to the uses of each person, 
what, to the sense which would employ it, it seems to 

59 



60 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

that sense to be. This, Cebes, we will consider as 
established, unless indeed the keen power of analysis 
that lies within you may discover a weakness, and thus 
demolish the assumption. 

Ceb. My thoughts have done nothing but consider 
the definition, Socrates, since yester-noon it was given 
by you. I accept it as irrefutable. It is a wonderful 
definition, for I cannot but see that it completely 
reconciles even such opposites as the subjective and 
objective philosophies. 

Sim. It is your Daemon, Socrates, that has spoken the 
word. 

Soc. You understand me, then ; the senses have office 
— one sense sees, another tastes, a third hears, a 
fourth smells, a fifth and sixth touch. What, now, 
Cebes, is the office of this seventh ? for surely, if it is a 
sense, it may not be without office of some kind or other. 

Ceb. I do not forget, Socrates, that we have pro- 
nounced it to be the sense which has to do with the 
something which distinguishes the capabilities of the 
man from other animals. 

Soc. Well remembered, Cebes. Then, as no office is 
found for this sense as relation is had with the material 
wants, and as a sense may not exist without office, so 
the demonstration is to be considered as complete that 
it is the instrument of man's relation with the God. 

Ceb. Does a sense exist elsewhere than in itself? 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 6 1 

Soc. What penetration you exhibit, Cebes But let 
us see. What is a Sense ? For instance, what would 
you call the sense of sight ? 

Ceb. I would say that the sense of sight is an instru- 
ment composed of eyes, optic nerves, and lobes ; these 
constituting a system whose office it is to see. 

Soc. And would you say that if there was no such a 
system as this, that then there would be no such a thing 
as sight ? 

Ceb. It shows itself to be as you say. 

Soc. Remember, Cebes, you have admitted that the 
measure of things exists alone in the senses. Do you 
mean us to understand by this, that things appreciated 
and understood alone through Sight would have no 
existence to a man who is without this system or sense 
that you have so learnedly named ? 

Ceb. How might it be otherwise, Socrates ? 

Soc. And would you further say that if there was in 
the world no such a thing as the sense of sight, that 
then likewise all things which are seen, would have no 
existence, as sight is concerned ? 

Ceb. This I say. 

Soc. And suppose, Cebes, that all the senses by 
which men know the world were abolished ? 

Ceb. Then it follows, Socrates, that there would be 
no world. 

Soc. What say you, Simmias ; is the conclusion right ? 
6 



62 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

Sim. I see not how Cebes may say otherwise. 

Soc. Give heed, Cebes. You have proven to our 
satisfaction that sight exists in Sight, and likewise of 
the other senses that the meaning of each lives in a 
same manner. Now, what is that sense which tells us 
about the God? 

All. Oh! Socrates. 

Soc. Give it name, Cebes. 

Ceb. I am overwhelmed, and dare not speak the word. 

Soc. How is it, Cebes, with men who do not know 
the God ? 

Ceb. It follows necessarily, Socrates, that they do 
not differ from the brutes. 

Soc. A man differs from a brute, then, in proportion 
to the quality and amount of the sense of Apprehension 
found with him ? 

Ceb. On the showing; this is to be accepted. 

Soc. Then, if a man be met with who, being deficient 
in those common senses which conduce to earthly lore, 
or having them of such mean quality that the judg- 
ment and thinking that come of them are beneath com- 
mendation ; if such a man be found possessed in abun- 
dance of the seventh sense, shall it prove to be the case 
that this one knows more of God than may a multitude 
of brighter men ? 

Ceb. It seems to me, Socrates, that we have only to 
put it thus : If a multitude be deficient in the sense 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 63 

of Sight, and one be found greatly endowed in such 
quality, shall not this latter see things clearer and 
better than may all the others, even if put together ? 

Soc. You comprehend me, Cebes. Who knows of 
the God is told by the God. In proportion as a man 
knows of the Divinity, so, it would seem, the Divine is 
within him. Can a man cultivate the sense of Touch, 
Cebes? 

Ceb. Why not? 

Soc. Or may the sense of Hearing be enlarged ? 

Ceb. Witness the refinements of the musicians, 
Socrates. 

Soc. What then follows concerning this sense of Ap- 
prehension? Can a man, Cebes, grow the God in 
himself? 

Ceb. It follows as a necessity. 

Soc. According, then, as a man cultivates the Divine 
sense, so is he found to know of that which the sense 
is; just, indeed, as in proportion to the acuteness of 
the common senses possessed by him is he found able 
to tell well, or indifferently, of what is touch, taste, 
smell, or condition. What we call inspired men are 
men preeminently endowed with Godliness. Moses 
had such largess that ages before the physicist had 
name the sage knew, through the God that occupied 
him, of the secrets of creation. Christ was so full of 
the God that all men who have God in them call him 



64 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

"The God," just, Cebes, as a drop of water might 
call the lake a sea. Yet in turn did Christ speak of 
the God : " Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani. ' ' 

Is the God immortal, Cebes ? 

Ceb. It so declares itself to be, and knowing neces- 
sarily itself, what is affirmed, is. 

Soc. But what of a man ? Is a man likewise im- 
mortal ? 

Ceb. I may answer only through the argument, 
Socrates. If God is immortal then man is immortal, 
and his consciousness of the immortality would seem 
to be in proportion to the God possessed by him. 

Soc. But how about men who do not possess this 
quality of Godliness ? 

Ceb. Such, by the showing, cannot be immortal, for, 
as we have seen, the difference between man and the 
brute lies alone in this quality, and if men having it 
not, are immortal, we have seen that brutes likewise 
must be immortal ; and this last is not so by the speak- 
ing of the God. 

Soc. Then, walking the earth, there are men and 
God-men — or demigods ? 

Ceb. The argument would show that it is thus, 
Socrates. 

Soc. Then we are to say that that idea of Pythagoras, 
that the soul is a necessary circle, is not a just idea ? 
Or rather would you prefer to say, Cebes, that ^Ethalides 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 65 

did, indeed, become Euphorbus, and that in turn 
Euphorbus became Hermotimus ; Hermotimus still in 
turn Pyrrhus, and that yet again Pyrrhus passed into 
the son of the seal-engraver ? 

Ceb. I think, Socrates, that it corresponds best with 
what we opine of the God, to say the latter. 

Soc. But what concerning a transmigration through 
other animals ? 

Ceb. The argument shows that here the Tyrrhenian 
was wrong ; except, indeed, that it might be shown he 
was not without understanding of the transmigrations 
which convert stones into vegetables, vegetables into 
beasts, and beasts into men, and that thus he under- 
stood a Providence which, in the end, brings all things 
into a circle. Think you that Pythagoras understood 
this, Socrates? 

Soc. You must recall what he said of the monad. 
But why say you, Cebes, that a metempsychosis cor- 
responds with what a God knows of himself? — we 
shall say that the God is in Cebes, shall we not ? 

Ceb. If so be it pleases you, Socrates, you may say 
that Cebes courts the God. But make answer; is 
the God, and that which we call Life, anything dif- 
ferent ? 

Soc. They are different, Cebes ; that is, different to 

the extent that one is Cause, the other, Effect. 

Ceb. This has not been shown. 
6* E 



66 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

Soc. Nothing has as yet been demonstrated ; we are 
coming to this, Cebes. 

Ceb. Give it definition, Socrates. 

Soc. Will it suit the purpose of what you would say, 
to esteem it as Severalty existing in Oneness ? 

Ceb. I stand rebuked, and will not again forget that 
you have before so named it. And, indeed, I should 
shame to have to be reminded, because of the alarm it 
created. 

Soc. Use this, then, if it stands your purpose, Cebes. 

Ceb. It stands it well, Socrates ; for if the God have 
Severalty, then it follows that the Entity is broken up in 
its offices, and if broken up in its offices, why should 
these go out because that a desk breaks down or a roof 
falls in ; the office is not in desk or roof? 

Soc. Then we are to esteem Cebes as a Pythagorean ? 

Ceb. Give heed, Socrates. Would you say that when 
the God goes out of a man because that the body falls 
to pieces, that then the God ceases to perform an office, 
and that an eternity is spent in the stillness and nothing- 
ness which come of being without office ? 

Soc. I would say not thus, Cebes; but the rather 
agree with what I infer you would say, namely, that 
the story of Ponticus is true, and that Pythagoras is 
indeed the son of Mercury. 

Ceb. Then are we to say that the God has no better 
office than that in which a God-man finds himself? 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY, 6j 

Soc. A God-man is certainly to say this as concern 
is had to himself, and as regard is had to his offices and 
influence. Is not the God the happiness and grace of 
the world, Cebes ? 

Ceb. This, of necessity. 

Soc. Howis it, Cebes ? 

Ceb. I see it all, Socrates. It is through his resi- 
dence in man. 

Soc. Then does it not follow that the God continues 
as he is known ; that is, as a God-man knows himself; 
for if with each change he should take himself away, 
and come not back again, what should save the world 
from having each day, and day after day, somewhat less 
of that which you say constitutes its happiness and 
grace ? 

Ceb. You would say, Socrates, that it is for a man to 
do his best in a situation in which he finds himself — 
not troubling the God about any to-morrow. 

Soc. I would say, Cebes, that the God has no to- 
morrow. 




MIND. 



WHO, AND WHAT IS MAN ? 



69 




WHO, AND WHAT IS MAN? 



Soc. Understand of what has been said, Cebes, 
through what is now said. 

Ceb. Unless, indeed, Socrates, the God has already- 
given me to understand it. 

Soc. It is well spoken. And if it be that He fault 
the present discourse, then is our show of demonstra- 
tion to be esteemed of less import than the sound of a 
bell ; for this, as we well know, has its tone, not in 
solidity, but in that which is directly the reverse of 
this, namely, in emptiness. 

Ceb. Give rule, Socrates. How does the God fault 
a discourse ? 

Soc. He turns from it, Cebes, as not finding within 
it that which satisfies. But give heed, and may the 
God be with us and help us — me, to unravel and ex- 
plain ; you, to comprehend. 

7i 



72 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

We start, Cebes, by assuming the existence — as a 
comprehensible thing — of a creation, secondary, and, 
as it is found in that which constitutes its life and 
movements, external to and independent of any im- 
mediate controlling action on the part of a Creator. 
We assume this, because creation discovers to the un- 
derstanding two materials, principles, or entities, and 
two only. The physicist, having these two, finds in 
them everything which has to do with the earth as it is, 
and with the phenomena associated with its life. The 
entities which compose the creation, are Force and 
Matter. 

Exclusion discovers a third entity — an entity ap- 
prehensible, but only negatively comprehensible ; an 
entity which this same exclusion shows to have neces- 
sarily preceded Force and Matter, and out of which 
these must have come. Here, Cebes, is the "Idea" 
of our pupil Plato, and here is the " Substance' ' — 
the Noumenon — of Spinoza. No learning, no explo- 
ration, no anything, ever has been found able to dis- 
cover Force and Matter as entities of self-creation. 

Ceb. Was it not Spinoza, Socrates, who asserted that 
in a single entity is the expression of all phenomena ? 
If I remember rightly, he queried somewhat after this 
manner. In the beginning, he said, was God, and the 
God was the all. How then may a thing, he asked, 
even the God, being the all and the everything, create 
out of itself a thing unlike itself? 



OR A TALK IN A CE METER Y. 73 

Soc. It was the question of a profound logician, 
Cebes, and it unsettled — unfortunately, and to the 
great grief of the sage — all men who were not God- 
men. But have you not, even already, answered the 
matter for yourself? Did we not recognize that even 
a man, any man, might do this which the Jew denied 
even the power of the God to do ? 

Ceb. I understand, Socrates. You do not say that 
Spinoza was wrong, but that he erred in using mortal 
eyes, and in telling of what he saw with an immortal 
tongue. 

Soc. You speak yourself with a poet's tongue, Cebes ; 
Anytus himself might not have put it better ; the Jew 
did indeed forget the difference between his own ears 
and the ears to which he spoke. But carry your 
memory back to the admission you made in assenting 
to that which you acknowledged as reconciling the 
opposite conclusions of the objective and subjective 
schools of philosophy. 

Ceb. In showing the mistake of Protagoras you have 
shown the error of Spinoza. I am answered, Socrates. 

Soc. Say rather, Cebes, that I show an error in the 
putting of a thing. But we may go on. Man is of the 
earth, earthy; this, necessarily, because of his consti- 
tution. He may be, or may not be, of the God, godly ; 
he may be without a soul ; he may differ in no respect, 
except in capability, from a brute or from a vegetable. 
7 



74 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

Ceb. This you are to demonstrate. 

Soc. This I am to demonstrate. 

Sim. We listen, Socrates, with all interest. 

Crito. Socrates would have us physicists as well as 
philosophers. 

Soc. I would have a man know himself. 

Sim. A moment, Socrates, if I may be pardoned the 
interruption. It was one of these moderns in much 
repute* who, in contradistinction to what you hold, 
taught his countrymen that the Soul is as a tabula rasa, 
and that all that comes to it comes from without — that 
in the infant it is best likened to a sheet of white paper. 
Do you say that this is error? 

Soc. He should have said Mind, Simmias, and then 
it would not have been error. 

Ceb. Simmias emboldens me to add that another of 
not less characterf likened the mind to a block of 
marble, in which the statue is prefigured by the veins in 
the block, and that thus all — defect or beauty — is 
from within, and that nothing is from without. What 
of this, Socrates ? 

Soc. It was the error of mistaking Temperament for 
Mind, and the one was not less wrong than was the 
other — a sheet is not the table on which it lies. But 
let us to the demonstration. Shall we begin, Cebes, by 

* Locke. f Leibnitz. 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 75 

asserting that man is an Automaton, and thus agree with 
the physicists ? 

Ceb. This, if so be it pleases you. 

Soc. What would you say of a watch, Cebes? is this 
also an automaton? 

Ceb. Meaning by this, just what, Socrates ? 

Soc. Meaning that it is a machine, which, when once 
set going, runs the length of its spring without other 
direction. 

Ceb. A man certainly is found to accomplish his func- 
tions through a motive power existing within himself. 

Soc. A watch is found able to mark the hours and 
minutes and seconds of a day. How is this, Cebes? 
has a watch intelligence? 

Ceb. By Jupiter, Socrates, you call a smile even to 
the face of Apollodorus. How can a machine have 
intelligence ? Is your question not the same as though 
you had asked whether or not a watch possesses a mind ? 

Soc. Yet, Cebes, let a man question his watch when 
he will, and it tells him the time of day. Can anything 
aside from intelligence tell the time of day? 

Ceb, I see your meaning, Socrates ; intelligence alone 
may tell the time of day. Truly here is a paradox — a 
man tells himself the time of day, yet does not himself 
know what o'clock it is. One's own intelligence has 
to speak to him through a medium. 

Soc. Can an ox speak the time of day, Cebes ? 



?6 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

Ceb. I should scarcely like to trust it for the minutes 
and seconds, Socrates. 

Soc. You understand me. Man is a machine ; this, 
and nothing different. Yet is there found within him 
an intelligence which is to him what the time of day 
is to the watch. A man may tell another who looks 
upon him concerning things which are not of himself. 

Ceb. But all watches will not tell the time of day? 

Soc. Well suggested, Cebes; only such mark the 
hours as bear the gift of speech. 

Ceb. And you would say, Socrates, that a man may 
be like a watch that runs without direction; that is, 
moving his hands and crying his tick-tack, yet be 
utterly lacking in that which is the meaning of his 
capability ? 

Soc. There is no difference between a watch and a 
man except as capability for office is concerned. See, 
Cebes, we may not of possibility say that the something 
which tells the time of day is of the watch proper, for 
it is seen that at times a watch has no more of such 
direction and office in it than has a stick or stone, yet 
at other times the meaning of the office is back, and 
we trust the voice even for the passing seconds. If an 
intelligence be found at times in a thing, and then 
again be not found in it, can we say that the intelli- 
gence is the thing, or that the thing is the intelligence ? 

Ceb. By Jupiter, Socrates, we could no more say this 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. J J 

than could we say that a man is the house in which he 
lives, or that the house is the man. 

Soc. Then when the Time of Day is not found in the 
watch you would not say that Time of Day is dead ? 

Ceb. Surely this might not be said, Socrates, seeing 
that watches have been dead, so to speak, for years, 
and after this the office has been found not less active 
than ever. 

Soc. Then because soul is not found in a body 
— that soul which is the capability of the human, as 
the time of day is the capability of the watch — you 
may not assert that soul is dead? 

Ceb. I will never again deny that soul is immortal. 

Soc. And what concerning its independence of man ? 
Will you deny that it holds different relation to its 
temple from that held by intelligence to the watch ? 

Ceb. I may not deny this, Socrates, seeing that soul 
is found often enough absent from the body. 

Soc. As when, Cebes ? 

Ceb. As when it is not present with any of tthese 
bodies that lie beneath the tombstones. 

Soc. A sun-dial tells the time of day; how is this, 
Cebes ? 

Ceb. I could have wished the illustration completed, 
fearing to find myself led from that which has been 
made so plain. 

Soc. It is completed, Cebes, only that we distinguish 
7* 



78 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

between soul and mind as between a watch and dial ; 
the latter being, indeed, nothing different from a sheet 
of white paper, which receives and shows that which 
falls upon it. 

Ceb. A dial is only a surface. Would you say, 
Socrates, that this is all that mind is ? that it is a thing 
without intelligence in itself? 

Soc. I would say, Cebes, that it is not, in itself, a 
maker of anything. 

Ceb. Is a man of genius, Socrates, not something 
different, as mind is concerned, from a common man ? 

Soc. Assuredly. But why do you not as well ask 
whether a dial of exquisite construction and markings 
differs from a rude board, out of which is brought the 
shadow by means of a piece of stick laid across it ? 

Ceb. You would say, then, that genius has the mean- 
ing of an accidental refinement, or arrangement, in the 
disposition of parts? 

Soc. I understand it thus, Cebes. 

Ce%. These moderns say that Thought is a function. 
What is the meaning of this, Socrates ? 

Soc. What is the function of a sun-dial, Cebes ? 

Ceb. If I am not wrong, the function of a dial is to 
show a shadow. 

Soc. Does a dial make the shadow that it shows ? 

Ceb. How might this be, Socrates, seeing that the 
shadow is a something external to it ? 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 79 

Soc. Yet you say, that to show a shadow is the func- 
tion of the dial ? 

Ceb. I may only maintain this. 

Soc. Then function consists in a giving forth of that 
which comes to an organ or instrument? 

Ceb. It would seem to be as you say. 

Soc. Whatever the quality of a production, are we 
not then to look upon it as of like signification ? that 
is, as a something received and given back? Heed, 
Cebes ; may Thought be else than a something which 
has fallen upon a sentient dial ? Is there any thought 
without experience ? And is thought not seen to in- 
crease, enlarge, and intensify itself according to the 
scope of observation enjoyed by a man ? 

Ceb. But you would have us believe that it is not 
thus with soul ? 

Soc. The functionings of a soul are from within, and 
of itself, consequently the outgivings are in no sense 
reflections. Did not the Christ confound the doctors ? 
From whence, Cebes, were the arguments used by the 
Christ-child ? Surely they were not, in any common 
sense, experiences, for a thousand ordinary experiences 
existed with the elders where a single one was to be 
found with the younger ; and yet Age found no speech 
to urge against Youth. But let us on ; our interruptions 
confuse the demonstration. 

A man, the natural man, man as an animal, is found, 



80 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

when analyzed, to be made up of the two entities to 
which we have alluded — Matter and Force. In this he 
is seen to differ in no single respect from any animal 
or reptile which creeps or crawls over the earth, or 
from any tree or plant that flourishes upon its surface : 
there are differences in the arrangement and disposition 
of particles, but this is all ; the matter is the same, the 
force is the same, and the matter and force are con- 
stantly shifting and changing from one thing to another 
thing, being never continuous in one place or with one 
individual. 

Ceb. Pardon, Socrates, but do you any more than 
assume the existence of these entities, Matter and 
Force ? 

Soc. You lose memory, Cebes. We assume that 
these exist on the evidences of the senses which per- 
ceive them. This has already been explained, and 
needs no further argument. Whether these are, in 
reality, things subjective or things objective, makes, 
as has before been shown, no iota of difference. They 
exist to the uses of a man as the natural man knows 
himself and them, and man must accept their reality 
or be without anything. If these exist not, then man 
exists not. 

Matter appeals to the senses, and to the experiences 
of the senses, as being an insensible material of which 
the tangible universe is composed. 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY, 8l 

Force may be described, after the same judgment, 
as an energy and power, insensible in itself; being not 
a result of molecular relation, but the cause of atomic 
combinations ; a thing in itself, as Matter is a thing in 
itself. 

There is no matter without its quota of force : for 
being without force, matter would be dead, and in the 
world there is no such a thing as death. Force, then, 
is that vital principle which is the Expression of life, 
and in which resides the meaning of automatic action. 
Has this not been well put by our pupil Plato ? " Two 
efficient causes are there, maintains the broad-headed, 
namely, that which is moved, and that which moves ; 
the things moved are the receptacles formed by the ele- 
ments; that which moves is the power of God ; " that 
is, Cebes, that which moves, is an entity which is re- 
lated to the world somewhat as the Time of Day is re- 
lated to a watch. Do you comprehend ? 

Ceb. Perfectly. 

Soc. Thus it is that Carneades puts it : 

" Nature did make me, and she does together keep me still, 
But still the time will come when she will pull me all to pieces." 

And thus, by Aristotle : Matter is moved by an Entel- 
echy residing in it, this being the cause of a continu- 
ous movement or agitation never found absent. Thus, 

F 



82 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

too, by a modern : * All things earthy are composed of 
monads. A monad is an autarchic automaton, being 
made up of force and matter. Heed still another : f 
There exists, says this one, a " welt-seele, ,, and this 
which, in the language of the metaphysician, is a non- 
ego, is identical with the Ego. 

Ceb. Meaning, this latter, what, Socrates ? 

Soc. Meaning the same as the Time of Day of the 
watch — a something which is not self-existent, but 
which yet is independent. 

Ceb. What is that, Socrates, which Hegelianism 
teaches ? 

Soc. The German, Hegel, whose judgment is so much 
valued by these moderns, teaches — and teaches wisely 
— that the world is not an act, but an eternal move- 
ment; that it is continually creating because of that 
which is the force of matter. So, also, avers another, 
whose experience and scope of outlook render his 
reflections among the brightest found among men. J 
From investigations, says this observer, carried through 
all the domains of chemistry and physics, we may only 
arrive at the conclusion that nature possesses a store of 
force which cannot in any way be either increased or 
diminished ; and that therefore the quantity of force in 
nature is just as eternal and unalterable as the quantity 
of matter. Heed an example, Cebes, and consider a 

* Leibnitz. f Schelling. J Helmholtz. 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 83 

jelly-fish. Here is a case in which the conjunction of 
the entities we consider is so simple, that no organs 
have been produced. Yet a jelly-fish eats without a 
mouth, moves about without limbs, digests without a 
stomach, nourishes its parts without vessels, and it may 
be, builds for itself a house of shell which no testaceous 
animal can excel. Is there not here demonstration of 
life as it exists in these simples ? A jelly-fish is little 
else than matter and force made visible. 

Yet mark, Cebes, what it is that Pythagoras asserts 
with such show of wisdom. It is impossible, says the 
sage, not to perceive that ulterior to phenomena resides 
a Directing Power. We come always to this, my friend. 

Ceb. Does not this modern whom men call Leibnitz, 
teach, with his system of monads, about the same as 
was held by the master Anaxagoras with his homoeo- 
meriae. 

Soc. Great words, Cebes, with simple meanings. 
The becoming and departing, said the Master, is a 
doctrine held by the Greeks without foundation, for 
nothing can ever be said to come or depart ; but, since 
existing things may be compounded together and again 
divided, we should name the becoming more correctly 
a combination, and the departing a separation. Anax- 
agoras has put it well, Cebes, and so also has Empe- 
docles: " Body is but a mingling, and then a separa- 
tion of the mingled.'* See, Cebes, it does not satisfy 



84 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

that we seek for the origin either in homceomerise or 
in the monad. There is a Something else. 

The entity which exclusion discovers is an undeni- 
able something, and must exist everywhere ; but, in the 
judgment of the human, what is the entity ? and where 
is it? He was a wise man and a good one, him whom 
they yet call St. Chrysostom ; and what said the saint ? 
" Of my knowledge I do know that there is a God who 
exists everywhere — that He is wholly everywhere, but 
the how, I know not ; also, that He is without begin- 
ning, ungenerated, and eternal; but the how, I know 
not. ' ' And what was that, Cebes, which was so well 
queried by him whom they name the " Heavenly "? * 
"To say what God is not, is much easier than to say 
what He is." 

Ceb. Yet we are to comprehend the God? 

Soc. We are to apprehend, Cebes ; that is, provided 
any of the God be found with us : and if we be not 
thus endowed, we may pass to that plane which limits 
comprehension, and getting thus far we have a negative 
proof in that — through the process of exclusion — we 
know there is something else even though we be with- 
out the sense which allows the taking hold of it. 

Ceb. Let us deny to ourselves, for the purpose of the 
demonstration, that we possess any other lore than that 
of the animal senses, for the other sense, having its 

* Augustine. 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 85 

knowledge in itself, needs nothing to its understanding. 
Let us proceed, Socrates, that we may understand how 
man as man is capable of knowing himself, for I doubt 
me but that Phsedo, who holds his tongue so demurely, 
is anxious enough to find out what is the pertinence of 
that exclusion which marks the line between God-men 
and the brutes. 

Soc. You hold me well and wisely to the point, 
Cebes. It is our idea to understand what is the mean- 
ing, and where the end, of scientific inquiry. 

I think, Cebes, we well understand that a man may 
not differ from a stone, vegetable, or brute, save as it is 
the case that he has found with him some material or 
substance or thing not found in the other. 

Ceb. This was agreed to. 

Soc. And we pronounced this something the quality 
of Apprehension ? 

Ceb. This is what we called it. 

Soc. Do the senses, Cebes, perceive as existing in 
creation any thing beside force and matter ? 

Ceb. Why not many things ? 

Soc. Give it name, Cebes ; what, for example ? 

Ceb. I am not clear, Socrates, but that mind is a 
something different from either of the entities you 
name. 

Soc. Will you retract, then, and say that mind is the 
same as soul ? 
8 



86 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

Ceb. This I perceive I may not do without admit- 
ting an immortal individuality for men who have no 
showing of the God in them, and as well would I have 
to carry to Hades, brutes and vegetables. 

Soc. But why not admit the one, and carry the other? 
Why should not all men be immortal ? 

Ceb. I am at no loss in understanding that this might 
not be, seeing that a thing cannot be unlike itself. 

Soc. Give it name, then, Cebes ; for if mind be not 
a thing residing in force and matter, and if it be not 
of the God, then we have a great discovery before us. 

Ceb. Explain me this, Socrates: How can a thing 
that reasons be alike with a thing that does nothing 
but reflect that which falls upon it ? 

Soc. If you insist on an answer, Cebes, you must let 
me go on after my own fashion. I doubt not that ere 
long we shall come to the place of a reply. 

A man is an organized body ; a brute is an organized 
body ; vegetables are organized bodies ; men, brutes, 
and vegetables have thus existence and function in 
one and the same law. A stone differs from a vegetable 
only as a brute differs from a man, i. e. , in being of a 
lower and of a subservient intention. A man may, 
and does, live and thrive on stones, but he may do so 
only indirectly. It is for the plant to take into itself, 
and to digest, the stone : it is for the ox, with his 
several stomachs, to convert many plants into a con- 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 87 

centrated meat, which is the pabulum for man — thus 
soil, plants, and brutes, necessarily precede man, and 
are as almoners to him. 

Man, of his organic nature, may act in organic re- 
lations not more intelligently than do vegetables ; he 
may accomplish his functions, and coordinate his move- 
ments, and, as such actions are concerned, one man 
may not be seen to differ from another ; albeit, between 
any two taken as examples there may be the difference 
of that which renders the one mortal, the other im- 
mortal; or, the immortal principle, differing in its 
relation with a human body, even as do force and 
matter, may be found to exist in a varying quota : for 
even as it is seen of one body that it possesses much 
matter, of another little ; of one that it is overflowing 
with vitality, of another that it is sinking from lack 
of it — so one man will be found God-like all the way 
through, his fellow shall show nothing at all of the 
Divine. 

Heed, Cebes, here is a beautiful passage from the 
book of the Soofees : " You say," says the book, " the 
sea and waves, but in that remark you do not believe 
that you signify distinct objects, for the sea, when it 
heaves, produces waves, and the waves, when they 
settle down again, become the sea : in the same manner 
men — the souls of men — are the waves of God. Or, 
you trace with ink upon paper certain letters, but these 



88 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

letters are not distinct from the ink which enabled you 
to write them ; in the same manner the creation is the 
alphabet of God, and is lost in Him. - 9 

Organic life, Cebes, is unfilled form — is a letter 
drawn with an inkless pen ; a letter drawn is not less a 
letter made because that it is without color ; a man is 
not less a physical man in that he is without a soul ; 
for even as the ink is not the form of the letter, so soul 
would not seem to be a necessary attribute of humanity. 

Soul is, in a sense, a correlative thing ; changing, 
however, never into anything else, being one from the 
beginning unto the end, which beginning discovers to 
us no origin, which end, it would seem, is never to 
come. 

Idiots and fools, say the Egyptians, are those whose 
souls are in heaven, while their grosser parts walk about 
the earth. 

A saint, affirms the Mussulman, is not to be con- 
demned, as are other men, for the commission of 
bodily sin, for his soul being absorbed in the contem- 
plation of the Divine, the bodily passions are without ,. 
other directions than the instincts. 

This it is, Cebes, that the Dervish holds. There is 
but one God, the creator of the world. When God 
made man, He was pleased to give him something 
which He did not give to any other of his creatures. 
God was pleased to gift man with an existence like his 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 89 

own, which will not only live in the present life, but 

will continue to exist hereafter in another This 

peculiar part of man's existence is his soul. The 
peculiar character of this existence is such as to lead to 
the conviction that it is more than human, and must, 
therefore, be Divine ; the origin of this soul is due to 
a direct emanation from the Deity ; and differs from 
the ordinary breath of life, which all other animated 
nature received on its creation.* 

Action in a man is of twofold signification ; it may 
have relation exclusively with what is known as reflex 
movement — automatic action — that is, an instrument 
of sensation being touched, as though it might be a 
spring, expression is conveyed to a second element, 
which in its turn acts upon others, and these still in 
turn upon others, until the most complex results may 
be seen to accrue. Yet all these actions have a mean- 
ing but little different from the tones which are given 
forth by a violin or flute. 

Now let us come to the reply. Mind is an auto- 
matic or reflective ability, residing, in varying degrees, 
in all organized bodies. And what is termed Reason 
is this same ability in working action. Let these asser- 
tions find illustration in an experiment common with 
these modern physiologists. If a frog be decapitated, 
and an irritant applied to one of its hind feet, the leg 

* History of the Dervishes. 
8* 



90 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

is withdrawn; let the irritant be increased, and both 
limbs are flexed ; still increased, all the limbs are moved, 
the frog jumping away. Let now be applied an irritant 
to the inner part of the thigh, and the foot of the 
opposite leg is used in effort to remove the offence. 
Next let the foot be cut from the limb, and, after a 
moment of apparent reflection, the knee is moved up 
so as to rub the part worried. 

The reasoning powers of a man may as certainly be 
independent of a soul, and not be a thing in itself, as 
in brutes what is called intelligence is not necessarily 
of the immortal principle. Which of two musicians, 
the one being in practice the other out, shall be 
found to discourse the finer music? And is it not 
seen to be the case that the best performer accom- 
plishes his manipulations with least premeditation or 
effort? Do not the fingers cover the stops, or touch 
the keys, with an unconscious and unpremeditated 
accuracy? Here, indeed, would what is esteemed 
commonly as reasoning scarcely appear to be employed 
— fingers move quicker than what is called thought. 
It would seem to be an excito-motor result, purely 
and simply; and this, in truth, it is. Thus we find 
ourselves led to maintain that thought — reason — is 
only reflection ; or, to put it in other words, that it is 
response to external impressions. 

Education is the cultivation of the excitability 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 9 1 

residing in matter : the schoolboy, with plodding care, 
toils through the stanzas of a page, the alphabet being 
called into requisition with almost every word ; the 
accomplished reader gets the sense, yet pronounces — 
if reading to himself — never a syllable. The two 
differ alone in that the one person possesses unculti- 
vated natural powers or offices ; the other has a cere- 
brospinal centre, or reflecting surface, so acutely 
responsive, that the slightest possible impression is 
equivalent to a result. 

Man, as an animal, would seem to be of higher 
organization than the brute only as the brute is of 
higher organization than the vegetable, the vegetable 
than the stone ; that is, as he is found to be possessed 
of refinement in attributes. Great parts in men have 
alone the signification of accidental molecular disposi- 
tion — some men have voice with which they sing, other 
men are entirely without voice, being dumb ; so there 
are birds which sing and birds which may not sing; 
mice even are there which chirp in their nooks and 
crannies, teaching the lesson of a oneness in nature. 
The man of genius is not great through his soul, but he 
comes to be marked as eminent among his fellows 
because it has happened that accident endowed him 
with peculiar sensibility on some aspect of the common 
reflecting surface of the nervous mass. He is, indeed, 
like the sensitized plate of the picture-maker, and the 



92 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

one receives and shows forth images not more naturally 
and readily than does the other. Is not genius allied 
with disease, inasmuch as it is an abnormal condition? 
And has not a Genius more occasion for medicine than 
for gratulations? He who knows the meaning of ge- 
nius, Cebes, pities the possessor, for in what is esteemed 
the gift is much suffering. A Genius reflects as naturally, 
and, in a sense, as unconsciously, as does a looking- 
glass hung out in face of the sun. Unmistakably is it 
the case, that a man may talk well, write well, do well 
a multitude of things, and yet do all that he does in 
the law of his organic relations, differing only, in the 
degree of his accomplishments, from the least impres- 
sible and most stupid either of men, lower animals, or 
vegetables. Soul, on the other hand, is an attribute 
which has pertaining to it associations higher and 
loftier than the things of colleges and books, and sen- 
sitive cerebrospinal surfaces. As it enlarges in a man, 
so it is found to speak words and act actions of its own ; 
and thus it is that the uneducated Gallilean unfolded 
life-lessons before which the learning and judgment of 
the world stands dumb ; thus it is that fishermen leave 
their nets and write books which universities reverence 
as models in philosophy; thus it is that a Cyrus 
understands his own immortality, and that a Cicero 
finds in old age anticipations more pleasurable than 
even those begotten of the most exquisite senses of 
youth, 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 93 

It is through the Genius alone, Cebes, that men are 
enabled to understand of the riches and capability of 
nature; great poems, great designs, great every things 
are in the way alike of every human brain, just as 
human faces fall alike against unsensitized and sensitized 
plates, and yet are seen to show themselves alone from 
the latter; the great things of the world are of the 
world, and not at all of the surface that reflects and 
shows them. A looking-glass will show a castle, but 
who thinks to credit the mirror as the maker and pro- 
ducer of that which it exhibits ? Ah, Cebes, the glory 
and harmony that are about us ! how little should we 
know of these without the Genius ! 

Ceb. What, if you be wrong in all this, Socrates ? 

Soc. Answer me, my friend. Is the image shown us 
by the picture-maker a something that had residence 
in his plate ? 

Ceb. No man would assert this. 

Soc. Whence then is it? for surely it is not seen 
when the eyes are turned away from the plate ? 

Ceb. Truly, Socrates, it is a reflection caught from a 
something external to it. 

Soc. The image is not, then, a production of the 
plate ? 

Ceb. This might not be the case, seeing that with 
like facility it would have shown a horse or a house. 

Soc. Neither any more are pictures the productions 



94 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

of the painters, verses the compositions of the poets, 
or beautiful designs the creations of the architects. 

Ceb. You would say, then, that men are born to 
different offices ? speaking of men as one speaks of 
machines. 

Soc. Men say this for themselves, Cebes. A man may 
polish and keep bright, but he does not arrange his 
brain \ therefore, may he not of possibility show that 
which it is not in the power of his surface to reflect. 
A man may do nothing different from that which he 
finds within him the ability to do. Carbon arranged 
as a surface of charcoal cannot flash back a sun-ray as 
when it finds its composition after the order of a 
diamond. 

Ceb. Does not this conflict, Socrates, with that 
famous parable of the talents which these moderns so 
continuously use as a lesson ? 

Soc. On the contrary, it is one truth endorsing 
another truth. To whom much is given, from him 
much is expected ; and to whom little is given, from 
him little is required. Is it not thus that men them- 
selves consider machines, Cebes? Bright or dull, a 
surface is not to be allowed to decrease in its reflecting 
power, for according to the polish, so is the reflection. 
A dull face may be made brighter, and a bright face 
may be made brighter still. 

Ceb. But how may a man polish and keep bright 
such a thing as an internal surface ? 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 95 

Soc. He is to do it as he does with the instrument 
which is kept from going to rust through much hand- 
ling. Heed, Cebes ; when a man suffers this surface to 
become dull, not only does he cease to give forth any- 
thing, but he becomes himself incapable of receiving 
anything. Many men are little different from mollusk 
or sponge. 

Ceb. You esteem, Socrates, that you have given us 
good and all-sufficient reasons for the faith in which 
you yourself seem so firmly rooted concerning this 
mechanical explanation of mind, and its entire sepa- 
rability from soul ? 

Soc. Analyze for yourself, Cebes, and if the subject 
appeal to you in any different manner, decide against 
me. For myself, what I have said, I believe; and 
this for the reason that, twist and turn this surface as I 
will, it shows me nothing different. 

Ceb. You believe, then, necessarily, that in the de- 
struction of the surface that reflects, that which is its 
function is destroyed also? 

Soc. Not more truly than do I believe in the nothing- 
ness of a shadow, when the dial is not in place to 
make one. But heed, Cebes, the reflecting surface, as 
it is seen, is used by the soul, just as eyes and ears are 
employed by it as instruments. When the God speaks 
through men, he must use the language which men un- 
derstand. And why shall He not make such markings 



96 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

on the dial as suits His purpose, and thus show forth 
Himself in the heart, as it were ? What shall the soul 
which resides in a man use as its instruments of action, 
if not these very senses which we perceive as the caterers 
to bodily offices ? Heed, again, Cebes ; what was that 
breathed by the God into the nostrils of the clay- 
formed human ? Shall we deny that this was the soul ? 
Or shall we say that it was the something which must 
be so intimately allied with this, and which, for want 
of better name, we have called the Capability ? 

Ceb. But if the soul use as instruments the senses 
of the organism, how may it be otherwise, Socrates, 
than that thus the God is recognizable by these senses ? 

Soc. Whist, Cebes; the horse no doubt speculates 
over the master that drives him, but think you that a 
horse can measure a man ? Yet what of all this ? Is 
it not enough to have discovered that we possess Capa- 
bility, and that this has for a man all the* meaning of a 
soul ? Is this very different from discovering and un- 
derstanding that all men have souls ? See, my friend, 
it is for a man to cultivate his Capability, or to deny it, 
as he wills : the God knocks continuously at the door 
of the heart, seeking to come, even Himself, to wider 
expression; seeking to get more of Himself into the 
world ; urging his right to the temples He has built. 
If a man will not open the door, then he remains, of 
necessity, dual in his nature, and the fulness of his 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY, g? 

meaning continues in that which constitutes duality. 
And see, Cebes, what an expression is this of free- 
agency ? And what an explanation of that consoling 
passage, " that the kingdom of heaven is within a man." 
Surely, where the God is, there is heaven. A man 
needs but to open his own gates that he find himself at 
once in paradise. One needs not to wonder and specu- 
late as regards the location of the city that is called 
golden ; the brightest spot in the kingdom of the blessed 
has been found amid the filth of a noisome prison cell. 
The man who understands not that the kingdom of the 
God is everywhere, may take to himself the conviction 
that he has not within him the sense of Godliness. A 
man gets farther and farther into the kingdom of 
heaven, as the God gets farther and farther into the 
man. 

Seb. Heed, Socrates. What, by such showing, be- 
come of the transgressions of men ? Is there no pun- 
ishment for sin ? 

Soc. You ask a question, Cebes, that belongs alone 
to the very ignorant. If you would find out for your- 
self, try transgression, and if you get not punishment 
enough, come back with other question. 

Ceb. Pardon, Socrates, but a multitude of men sin, 

and then glory and pride and pleasure themselves in 

'the offences, seeming to find little punishment that 

worries them. 

9 G 



98 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

Soc. Foolish Cebes, not yet to have grasped the 
meaning of suffering by negation. Such men, my 
friend, are the most unenviable and myopic of mortals — 
they hug to their breasts bundles of thorns in an entire 
obliviousness to the existence of boquets of fragrant 
roses ; such are as swine, whose dish is a trough, and 
whose nourishment deadens while it fattens. Oh, Cebes ! 
that you, of all the children of men, should ask such 
questions ; and this, while every grave, and every house, 
and every street, swarm with their multitude of answers — 
hell in so many places, and only heaven in so few — 
the Kingdom that is everywhere negated by the Tartarus 
that is nowhere but in a man's own heart — not even 
enough consciousness left to evoke a cry for the chances 
of the Acherusian lake. Whist, Cebes; some men 
love, and some men think they love — what is the 
difference ? 

Ceb. I am well corrected, Socrates. But are you to 
be understood as maintaining that the Deus Mundi is 
nothing different from that Godliness which resides 
with a God-man ? 

Soc. Things dissimilar in appearance and in ap- 
parent nature may be of like constitution. Ice is 
water, Cebes, but water is not ice. Aquosity is 
hydrogen and oxygen, but these gases are not aquosity. 
Soul is force, but Force is not soul. 

Ceb. But, it is natural to query : If all soul be a com- 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 99 

mon soul, how may distinction exist between the whole 
and a part ? Where is God ? the individual God ? and 
where is man — the man that apprehension teaches as 
being possessed of individual immortality ? 

Soc. One, being seated by the side of the great Nile, 
did scoop up in his palm that which contained in each 
drop all that makes the water — yet did the river run 
on as calmly, and grandly, and as individually as 
ever. 

Ceb. And the palmful evaporated, and found its 
way back into the stream ? 

Soc. Yes, Cebes, found its way back into that it was, 
and no man might distinguish that portion which 
answered the purpose of an illustration. 

" As one body seems the aggregate 

Of atoms numberless, each organized, 
So, by a strange and dim similitude, 
Infinite myriads of self-conscious minds 
In one containing Spirit live, who fills 
With absolute ubiquity of thought 
All his involved monads, that yet seem 
Each to pursue its own self-centring end." 

From the scientific standpoint, no particle of con- 
fusion would seem to exist in viewing as in inseparable 
conjunction the all soul and the individual souls of 
men : for, as to unthinking people, fathers and sons ap- 
pear like distinct individualities, yet does the physicist 



100 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

know that such separation is but conventional : for how 
might it be but that all men are in that from whence 
man had origin — ■ that " I and my Father are one ' ' ? 

Ceb. But a son, it may be said, returns not into his 
father. 

Soc. A narrow and most gratuitous assertion. Is not 
the father in his time a son ? and does he not in turn 
go the way whence he came ; and goes not each son in 
a self-same way, forever — coming from, going back, 
into that which is the origin? 

. Ceb. But the attributes of God, it is to be suggested, 
are justice and mercy and long endurance ; and men, 
the best of men, are found, too often, unjust, pitiless, 
and impatient. 

Soc. So, also, it is that other water which one has 
from the river is found putrid and filthy, yet we may 
not deny its origin, nor that whereof it is. So, also, 
the brine which comes in from the sea is found saltless 
in the streams of distant meadow lands ; and yet these 
are not two waters. 

Ceb. But man is insignificant, and God is All- 
mighty ! 

Soc. Yes; so also the Nile which was held in the 
palm, evaporated, and quickly disappeared. Yet the 
great current flows on forever, and deluges Egypt. 

Ceb. But how, Socrates, is to be explained the indi- 
viduality of a human soul, if it is to be esteemed as not 
a thing in itself? 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 101 

Soc. Are not the individualities of children as 
entities, and yet is it to be denied that parent and 
child are one? 

So, also, is it not the case that centre and circum- 
ference are one, for may it be that the former can exist 
without the latter ? Yet is a centre a point so minute 
that human eye has never beheld it ; while a circum- 
ference may be so expansive that it shall girdle the 
world. 

Ceb. But all this is a judgment of soul formed and 
based on a knowledge of matter. 

Soc. Yes, so it is premised to be. It is judgment by 
exclusion — it is comprehension; yet is it found to 
correspond, so far as it goes, with the definitions of ap- 
prehension. Matter is matter, and it is seen to be for- 
ever in a state of transmigration ; being to-day of this 
body, to-morrow of that. Yet does the physicist find 
it made up of elementary particles, which particles are 
eternal and indestructible in their individuality, never 
being lost to themselves. Here, in even so crude a 
thing as matter, are we able to illustrate numberless 
individualities residing in an oneness. 

Ceb. But God is all knowledge. If, then, God and 
the soul of man be one, man, it would certainly seem, 
should have the secret by which He created the earth 
and the sky ; and he should be able to tell unto him- 
self the wherefore and the whereof of life and of action. 
9* 



102 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

Soc. Excellently put, Cebes; you surpass yourself. 
Yet let an answer be found in the confusions of Ly- 
sander, who, on his life, can tell nothing of such simple 
matters as the muscles and tendons which move the 
limbs of the child he created. He did also construct 
the eye, and what eye is so tell-tale as that of the boy 
Zapater ? Yet has no one ever judged Lysander as an 
optician, and, indeed, he might not tell how many 
humors he did put into the orb ; and of that complex 
thing, the retina gangliformis, he knows certainly not 
so much as the name. Yet it is not to be denied that 
from his creating power did all these things come. 

Ceb. Go on, Socrates. 

Soc. If, now, these conclusions of comprehension are 
not to be overthrown by the higher wisdom of appre- 
hension, it would seem to be with Soul as it is with 
Matter and Force — free is the one as are the others. 
Soul is that " Essential Form M as understood by Plato, 
to possess which is to have all good. He who gathers 
of it becomes, in proportion to the gathering, Godlike : 
he who denies and rejects the good, fails and shrinks, 
and withers away even as does he who refuses to take 
to the matter of his body air and sunshine. 

It can only be that God is immortal life, and thus is 
it happy provision that it seems to pertain to a man's 
self, as to what extent immortality is to be enjoyed by 
him. Let man die — for so he would seem to be able to 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. IO3 

die — if he so wills, as a brute dies ; he who so departs, 
carries with him nothing of the immortal ; somebody 
else enjoys his share. It is with soul, Cebes, as with 
gold ; common property is it, yet it is seen that some 
men so strive, and so do continuous battles for gold, 
that they may be esteemed as having converted them- 
selves into statues of this metal ; others, they who battle 
not, go down to their graves without even so much of 
coin as shall suffice to pay for the nails which hold the 
coffin-boards together. 

It is to be comprehended that it is with God — the 
All Soul — as it is with the sun. Day after day, through 
all the generations of man, has this great mystery been 
seen in the sky : yet what child but knows that in it is 
the color of the leaf; the absence of the darkness 
which its presence negates ; the organic life of every- 
thing that lives on earth? yet, that of itself it grows 
never less. And this sun is, in seeming, something dis- 
tinct, and has an apparent separation of millions of 
miles from that which is itself. Wonderful condition ! 
that man has a God and Father, yet is himself God 
and Father. Wonderful ! that a little flower should 
have its beauty by reason of sunshine that is a part of ■ 
it, yet that the sun is a great planet far away in the 
sky. 

In proportion, Cebes, as a man is Godly, so of 
necessity does he grow in apprehension. Mysteries 



104 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

there are which it is difficult to comprehend, yet which 
are easy of apprehension. Is it not felt of every man 
who aspires to work and to live nobly, that such work 
and life are found to lie in, and yet to be without him- 
self? herein being, indeed, one of the many negative 
proofs of an immortal individual principle. Is not the 
negation of the man, with his passions, his weaknesses, 
and his fallacies, a necessity, that one may gain lofty 
ends ? Does not that eagle fly highest which has the 
cleanest wings ? Runs not slowest that animal whose 
limbs are most mud be-draggled ? To apprehend, is 
to know, without comprehending. Does not that 
ignorance — of man's knowledge — which bows before 
the shrine apprehend, yet what comprehends it of the 
Omnipotence that is worshipped. May a mouse compre- 
hend an elephant which is only itself enlarged ? Or 
may the gnat comprehend wherein its wings differ from 
those of the ostrich ? That like be unto like who may 
dispute. Yet who shall comprehend how that breath 
which is the immortal life of man, enters into him, and 
becomes his individual immortality? And yet who 
may doubt that this is ? Not that a Moses, or a John, 
has asserted it — not even because it is an expression 
of the vox populi, which we accept as the leges Dei, 
but because in that exhibit which knowledge calls ex- 
clusion do we find Apprehension denominated, and its 
existence as a Sense demonstrated. 



OR A TALK IN A CE METER Y. 105 

Take lesson, Cebes, and you others who sit among 
the tombstones. Who will perish as cat or dog when 
he may live as a God ? Who will crawl among mold, 
when the bright empyrean invites him? Who will 
exist alone to the performance of animal offices, when 
the Divine asks for and craves his help ? Doubt it not, 
my friends, these modern physicists may not have their 
arguments gainsayed or their demonstrations brought 
to naught : a man is an automaton ; mind is a function ; 
and these, when combined, are found to be nothing 
better than a machine ; and as a machine, the parts go 
to destruction and to nothingness; one piece after 
another piece going, until in the end no man may say 
that a machine ever existed. — But the office, — the office, 
O Cebes ! — Is not greatest length of life in an office ? 
He who would have immortality is to find it alone in 
the office of his capability : for of all offices, this is the 
single one that is immortal, and in its immortality all 
that is divine in a man is rendered eternal — love, 
virtuous actions, and all the things which are of Godly 
nature. It is a grand intention This which is the 
capability of a man; it is the grandeur of the God 
himself. Shall a man find himself able to bear such 
office and at the same time give his every action and 
thought to the service of Mammon? Heed, my 
friends, I read you a passage from a famous book of 
these moderns. It is a strange passage, to say .the 



106 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER. 

least of it. See what you can make out of it. But no. 
I read it not to you : let me the rather write it in great 
letters across the white face of a tombstone, that thus, 
whenever you find yourselves in this arcanum, it may 
stare its words into your faces, and thus compel you to 
consider it ; for that it is of vast import to men is not 
to be doubted, seeing that it belongs to that utterance 
which we have learned to be the speech of the God. — 
See ; thus it is, 

" It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a 
needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom 
of God. 11 




WORKS OF DR. GARRETSON. 



" TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER," 
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